After Cassidy leaves, the apartment shrinks down to two people and the cold dishes I never served.
Elliott stands by the door. He does not come further in.
"Wren. I'm sorry."
I drop the gift basket into the kitchen trash without unwrapping it.
"You don't owe me an apology. You were lied to too."
His voice goes lower. "I should have protected you."
That sentence does something to my sinuses I cannot let him see.
I move to the kitchen and run the sink and start washing the four water glasses I poured for nobody. The water is loud. It covers what is happening to my face.
He follows. He stops in the doorway.
"Can I try again."
The glass slips half an inch in my hand.
I shut off the tap.
"No."
He doesn't move.
I dry my hands and turn around. I look at him.
"Elliott. The misunderstanding clearing up doesn't make the wound disappear. Three years ago my father was hours from intubation and I was the only one in the room. I made the transfer arrangements alone. I paid down the debt alone. I left Boston alone. I hated you, in that period, with my full chest. That happened. It happened to me. Cleared-up timeline doesn't unhappen it."
His throat moves.
"I know."
"You don't."
I look at him.
"That night, I fell asleep in the ER hallway. I dreamed you came. I woke up to your mother's lawyer."
He has gone the color of the kitchenette wall.
"I am going to clean every piece of this up."
"That's your business."
I open the front door.
"Mr. Pei. It's late."
He looks at me for a long time. He picks his coat off the chair.
On the way out he stops at the stroller in the entryway.
"I'll take this."
I exhale.
He adds, without looking at me, "When you actually have a kid I'll send a new one."
I almost shut the door.
He puts his hand against it.
"Wren. I am not going to push you."
I look up at him.
"But please stop inventing Bill."
The door closes.
I lean against it. I slide down to the floor.
My phone vibrates. Maeve.
— was that fun
— almost died
— btw eli is standing on the sidewalk
I get up. I walk to the bay window.
He is standing under the streetlamp on Inman. Hands in his coat pockets. Head tipped up toward my floor.
He doesn't call. He doesn't come up.
He just stands there.
Like a man who finally made it to the hospital and found the room empty.
By morning the office is detonating.
Someone leaked last night to the #mktg-watercooler Slack channel and from there to every other channel in the company.
— wait so wren is married to CASSIDY pei?? — no the BABY is cassidy's — no the baby is eli's. she's the wife — guys read it again. wren is married to bill. who is bill?? — this is better than Succession
I walk into the marketing pen and forty heads find a sudden interest in their second monitors.
Karen sets a coffee on my desk without looking at me.
"Wren. Your son's adorable."
I keep my face flat. "Thanks. He's at preschool today."
She lowers her voice. "Mr. Pei held an emergency exec meeting at seven-thirty. He killed every Sterling-Whit contract on the table. All three."
My fingers stop on the keyboard. "All three."
"Mhm. Camilla just showed up at reception. Building security walked her out."
The doors of the marketing pen bang open.
"Wren. Get out here."
Camilla. Her hair is unbrushed. Her eyes are red and lit.
"You happy? The Sterlings just lost three contracts. My father is in the hospital."
The pen has gone silent. Brendan is, very slowly, sliding lower in his chair.
I stand up.
"The contracts are Mr. Pei's call. Talk to him."
She raises her hand.
A second hand catches her wrist mid-air.
Elliott has come out of nowhere. His face is the temperature of his mother's last night.
"Camilla. Don't make me call the police."
Tears start. "Eli. We've known each other for twenty years. You'd do this to me."
He releases her wrist. He does not step back.
"You went after her father. Did you remember those twenty years then?"
Camilla goes still.
He drops a folder at her feet.
"Three years ago. The complaint that put Donovan Medical Devices under FDA review. You filed it."
I freeze.
"I didn't —"
"Email metadata. Wire transfer. Sworn statement from your former assistant. It's all in there."
The blood goes out of her face.
I bend down and pick up the folder. The first page is a timeline. Donovan Medical Devices, regulatory complaint to the Massachusetts AG's office, October 7, 2023. Cease-and-desist. Bank covenant breach. Bankruptcy filing twenty-two days later.
My father did not lose his company because the business cycle turned.
He was pushed off it, one stair at a time, with his own daughter's name redacted from every cover sheet.
I look up at Camilla.
She takes a step back.
"Wren. Don't look at me like that. You took Eli first. You started it."
I tighten my grip on the folder. My voice is even.
"Call the police."
When the BPD officers walk Camilla out of the lobby, no one in the building speaks.
Elliott offers to drive me to the station for the statement.
I refuse. "I'll go myself."
He doesn't argue. He just calls a town car and asks the driver to wait at the curb in case I need a ride home.
After that day my life condenses into evidence binders and lawyers.
I pull every document from my father's old case. I sit with the AG's office. I sit with our attorney. I do not have time to feel the things I am supposed to feel.
Elliott does not push the line. He just slides documents across to me, one folder at a time, never with his name on the cover.
At the office he is still the cold acquirer. Cuts marketing spend. Reams a deck for being lazy. Holds a budget review like he is auditing a startup he is about to short.
Once, working past midnight, my stomach goes into a spasm so bad I cannot straighten up.
The office door opens.
He sets a paper CVS bag and a Whole Foods bag on my desk.
"Eat first. Yell at me after."
I look at the bags. "How did you know my stomach hurts."
"You press your left palm against your stomach and keep typing with your right hand. Like nobody can see it."
I do not move.
"Three years ago I didn't make it in time. I'm trying to be less late."
I drop my eyes to the keyboard.
"Elliott. Don't say things like that."
"Okay."
He really does stop. He unpacks the bags onto my desk in the order a person would use them: a bottle of warm Gatorade, a roll of Tums, a small carton of Whole Foods chicken broth, a plastic spoon still in its wrapper. The CVS receipt is twenty-three minutes old. The Whole Foods one is twelve.
I drink half the broth.
He sits across from me answering email. Quiet. Quieter than he is in any meeting I have run. I keep waiting for him to say something and he does not.
Around midnight Maeve calls.
"Wren. You're still at the office? Cassidy says big bro is too."
I look at Elliott. "Yes."
She is silent for a beat.
"Wren. New development. Camilla's assistant flipped. There was a third party in the conspiracy."
My finger stops on the spoon.
"Who."
Maeve's voice goes lower.
"Linh."
The room makes a high noise.
After my father's stroke Linh was the one who did the hospital paperwork with me. Linh sat in the discharge meetings. Linh told me, Wren-bird, don't look back. There's nothing here for you anymore.
It turns out the road I couldn't go back down, she had been the one to seal off.
The next morning I drive to the rehab facility in Brookline.
My father is in his chair by the window. The stroke has left his left side slow and his speech in pieces, but he tracks me when I walk in.
Linh is feeding him breakfast. A spoon of oatmeal. A sip of water.
She smiles when she sees me. The same smile she has given me for eleven years.
"Wren-bird. What brings you in today?"
I set the binder on the bedside table.
"Camilla's assistant talked."
The spoon clatters back into the bowl.
My father makes a small choked sound from the back of his throat.
I take his hand.
"Dad. It's okay. Take a breath."
Linh's face moves through three colors.
"Wren. Let me explain —"
"How much did Camilla give you."
The tears arrive on schedule.
"I did this for the family. Your father's company was already in trouble. The Pei woman said if you left Eli they'd take care of the medical debt and there'd be enough for Kevin's tuition —"
I look at her.
"So you forged my signature. You pretended to walk me through the paperwork. You told me to leave Boston. And you cashed a half-million-dollar check for a kid who isn't even my dad's blood."
"What was I supposed to do —"
She slides off the chair onto her knees on the linoleum.
"Wren. He needed BC. Junior year is sixty-eight thousand. Your father couldn't work. Your father's bills were eating us. I'm one woman."
Kevin is her son. Not my dad's son. My father raised him for ten years and signed his FAFSA forms and drove him to soccer practice.
I laugh once.
"My father is in this room. Right now. You took his life and laid it down like asphalt for your son."
She grabs the hem of my coat.
"Wren-bird. I made a mistake. Don't call the police. I am begging you."
I free the coat from her hand.
"You're begging the wrong person."
The detectives I called from the parking lot come in two minutes later. Linh stays on her knees on the linoleum until they help her up.
My father's eyes are wet. His fingers grip mine like he is afraid I will leave too.
I lean down and put my forehead against his.
"Dad. It's done."
He cannot make a full word. He keeps trying. He repeats the same syllable, soft and broken, again and again.
I understand him.
He is saying sorry.
I walk out of the building at noon. Elliott is leaning against his car at the curb.
He does not ask how it went. He hands me a bottle of warm water.
I take it.
"You don't have to be here."
"I didn't want you to walk out alone."
I look at him.
"Elliott."
"Yes."
"Are you free tonight."
His eyes do something.
"Let me buy you dinner."