Chapter 2 - A Hotel Room With Three Locks
Rebecca arranged two adjoining rooms at a small airport hotel under her firm's name.
Evelyn refused my offer of the presidential suite at one of my properties.
"A building with your last name on it doesn't feel safe," she said.
I had no argument that could make that sentence less painful.
Oliver wanted to know whether the hotel had a pool.
Theo wanted to know whether there would be waffles.
Evelyn wanted to know whether anybody could find us.
I asked hotel security to restrict access to our floor and gave the staff strict instructions that no guest information was to be released.
Rebecca cautioned me not to use the company's security resources without creating an independent record.
My mother still sat on its board, and confidentiality was about to become a contested commodity.
Inside the room, Evelyn unpacked two clean shirts, a medication bottle, a coloring book, and three toothbrushes from the blue suitcase.
The rest of the space held papers.
Every rejection letter.
Every warning.
Every hospital bill.
Six years of defending herself against a man who had never known he was attacking her.
"I wrote to your office after Oliver was born," she told me.
"Then again when Theo spent five days in the hospital with pneumonia."
"What did they say?"
"Nothing. Eventually someone called to tell me further contact could be treated as harassment."
She pushed a sealed envelope across the dresser.
My company address was printed in my own assistant's handwriting.
I recognized the handwriting from invitations and birthday cards.
My throat tightened when I saw the return stamp.
It was not marked undeliverable.
It had been stamped refused.
"My assistant never showed me this," I said.
"Then somebody instructed her not to."
The accusation was fair.
I called my former assistant, Claire Morrow, who had retired three years earlier.
She answered from Florida and sounded pleased to hear me until I mentioned Evelyn.
Then she went silent.
"Your mother said it was a private extortion matter," Claire whispered.
"She told us all correspondence from that woman was to go directly to family counsel."
"Did you open any of it?"
"No. But I kept a log."
She promised to send it to Rebecca, then hesitated.
"Marcus, there was a man at the office once. He had photographs of two newborns."
My grip tightened around the phone.
"Who was he?"
"I don't know. Your mother took him into the conference room. He came out crying."
After the call, I found Evelyn in the bathroom, leaning against the sink.
"You can stop trying to make everything right in one night," she said.
"I know," I replied.
"Do you? Because you keep looking at me like a problem you can buy your way out of."
I wanted to protest.
Instead I said, "Tell me what you need."
"A promise that when it gets ugly, you won't choose the company over them."
I told her I would choose the boys.
She gave no sign of believing me yet.
At eleven fourteen, someone slid a white envelope beneath our door.
Inside was a photograph of Evelyn entering the hotel with the twins.
On the back, in neat blue ink, were four words.
May you like
THE AGREEMENT STILL APPLIES.
