Part 2: January Seventeenth

“How old is she?”

The second time, the words barely cleared his mouth. He was still crouched, the watch closed inside his fist, Nora’s yellow sleeve brushing his knee. Clara heard the calculation already starting behind his eyes and knew lying would not survive it. Lying had kept the child alive in this house for nearly four years. The watch was in his hand. Twenty-seven people had heard the word daddy.

“Three.”

Adrian’s eyes shut. The crease beside the left one did not smooth. When he opened them again they were on Nora, on the tie, on the purse hanging open like evidence.

“When is her birthday?”

“January seventeenth.”

He did not need a calendar. Clara watched the numbers arrive. James had gone off the road in September. Four months before a January birth. The rain. The curve. The closed casket. The three men who were not in any report.

Adrian looked at the girl again. Really looked. The dark of the eyes. The set of the mouth when she waited for an answer. The way she had said unbelievable, as if the floor had personally offended her.

“Is James her father?”

No one in the hall breathed. A guard’s shoe creaked and then went silent, as if even that had been a mistake. Mrs. Holloway stood with the tablet against her chest and did not write.

Clara swallowed. The taste of metal sat at the back of her tongue.

“Yes.”

Adrian rose. The watch stayed in his hand. He did not look at the staff. He did not have to. Mrs. Holloway’s voice came low and even, the voice she used for schedules and for things that were no longer allowed to be witnessed.

“Out.”

Coats. Shoes. The soft click of the front doors. Within seconds the breakfast room held three people and the light off the vase.

Adrian faced her. The laugh was gone. What remained was the man who buried a brother on Tuesday and emptied a street by Wednesday.

“You knew my brother.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Almost two years.”

“And nobody knew.”

“James wanted it that way.”

Something moved across his face and hardened there. Not grief. The other thing. The thing the newspapers never printed.

“Why?”

Clara’s hands had nowhere to go. She kept them at her sides, where he could see they were empty.

“Because of you.”

The silence after that had weight. Nora looked from one of them to the other, the plastic purse still open, crayon dust on her fingers. The silk tie had twisted sideways on her chest. She did not understand the room. She understood that the man who had laughed was no longer laughing.

“Mommy?”

Adrian did not answer the child. His eyes stayed on Clara, and in them she saw the coffee shop, the rain, the watch she had hidden in a drawer for years, and the brother who had crouched on sidewalks and would never crouch again. The silver caught the light once more between his fingers. J.C. The letters did not blink.