CHAPTER 27
Eliza
◆
He stays silent. None of us speak.
The Mont Blanc on the marble. The page face-up. The silver tip catching the brass sconce light.
I take the brass pencil out of my pocket.
I have carried this pencil since I was twenty-eight — since the year before my mother died, since the night she gave it to me at the kitchen table with the cap already worn smooth at the clip because she had carried it herself for two years before she gave it to me.
I unclip it from the leather memo cover.
I set it on the marble beside the Mont Blanc.
The pencil is light against the heavy lacquer of Hawkes's pen. It looks small on the black marble. It looks exactly the size I have always known it to be.
Helene, who has been at the door — she is not a signatory; she is a council-recognized witness for the medical record — walks two paces to the table.
She unpins the cobalt enamel from the collar of her white linen blouse.
She sets the pin at Hawkes's left hand. The cobalt catches the brass sconce in a small clean blue point.
Three objects on the black marble now. The Mont Blanc 149. The brass mechanical pencil, 0.5mm.
The cobalt enamel nursing pin she has worn since her novitiate in Naples and that her sister-in-arms wore in Boston for ninety-nine years.
Hawkes looks at the three objects on the marble. He takes them in once. He nods again.
"Bien," Adrienne says, very quiet.
The audit is filed.
The London lawyer at the curve of the circle finally uncaps her Pelikan.
She countersigns under Hawkes — a witness signature in the small box at the lower right; black ink; a clean Continental hand.
She caps the pen. She slides the page into one of the manilla folders.
She slides the folder across the marble to Hawkes, who slides it back to her, who tucks it into the steel-frame briefcase at her feet.
The audit-hash chain is now in the mortal-evidence chain of custody.
Tomorrow it will be in the Wren-Hale firm safe in the financial district. By Monday it will be a docket entry at the SEC.
I take the brass pencil back. I leave it on the marble for the count of ten breaths so the gesture is complete; then I take it.
I clip it back to the leather memo cover.
I put the cover back in my left jacket pocket.
Helene re-pins the cobalt enamel at her collar.
Hawkes caps the Mont Blanc and hands it back across the marble to Julian.
Julian takes it. He does not look at me.
He sets the pen on the marble in front of him. He nods at Hawkes.
"Thank you, Reginald," Julian says.
"Don't thank me, Julian. The work is hers. I am the man with the seal."
"Thank you for the seal."
Hawkes's mouth tilts at the corner. "I am going to drink your coffee now, Vance. I have been told you keep a Jura that has not been broken in nine days. That is a record."
"Pippa is no longer using the building," Adrienne says, drily. "The machine has been allowed to settle."
Hawkes laughs once, short. He pushes his chair back.
He stands. He shakes my hand — his palm dry, his grip firm, the same handshake he gave me the first morning I walked into Wren-Hale as a junior.
He says, low, just to me, "Quinn. Your mother would have read this audit and asked you to walk her through the footnote on page two-seventeen.
The one about the 1971 reroute. She would have caught that you cited the wrong sub-clause.
I caught it for her. I have already fixed it. "
"Thank you, Reginald."
"Don't thank me. " He puts a hand on my shoulder for a count of two seconds and then takes it away. "We have a few months of mortal court work ahead. I will be in your office at eight on Monday."
"I will not be in my office at eight on Monday. I will be in Albany at my father's facility. I will be in the office Tuesday at eight."
He nods. "Tuesday at eight."
He goes.
---
Lunch in the kitchen at one. The marble island; the brass pot rack throwing soft brass across the Carrara; the Lacanche burner on low under a small copper pan of butter and lemon that Adrienne is doing something to with a chef's economy.
Hawkes is seated at the island on the corner stool.
Julian beside him. Adrienne at the range.
Helene at the far end of the island stirring sugar into espresso.
The cobalt enamel pin re-pinned at her collar; the small blue point catching the brass over and over again. Sebastian sits today at the safe apartment in the rail district with Pippa and Cora; Henrik is with the lobby team finishing the post-vote sweep.
I eat. The last meal I took sitting down was three days ago. The bread is sourdough; the butter is salted; the pear is a Comice; the cheese is a small wedge of a Comté that Adrienne keeps in the cellar wall behind the Bordeaux and that she takes out twice a year. Hawkes drinks Adrienne's espresso.
Julian drinks coffee with cream — the first time I have seen him drink coffee on the page, but he has been drinking it since 2014 because he started a CEO cover identity that needed coffee and he discovered he likes it; he tells Hawkes this in two sentences; Hawkes laughs again, less short this time.
The kitchen is warm. The cold snap holds outside the windows but the kitchen is warm.
At two-thirty Hawkes leaves. Henrik takes him down in the private elevator. Helene goes to her clinic on forty-two. Adrienne goes to her office on thirty-five. Julian and I are alone in the kitchen with the lemon-butter pan on the burner that Adrienne has turned off but not moved.
He looks at me across the marble. He has the look he gets when he has not slept past four — the small architectural sharpening at the cheekbone, the pale gray eyes a half-shade colder than the alabaster of his temple.
He has been waking before four since the testimony — in the library since one, in the Vault Room since seven, on the phone with the London chambers and the captured vampire's counsel and the SEC liaison Vance has retained since 1986 since nine.
The brand on the inside of his left forearm is concealed by his shirt sleeve. He has held warm today; he has been awake.
"Quinn," he says.
"Vance."
"You have not eaten today."
"I ate just now."
"You ate three bites and pushed the rest. Eat the rest."
I eat the rest. He watches me eat. He keeps his hands on the marble; he lets the plate sit between us; he watches me eat the pear and the cheese in the slow careful way I have started to eat in his kitchen, a way I never managed at the Granite Hotel or in my apartment or at Wren-Hale at my desk.
I eat it. I drink the water. I push the plate away.
"Marcus is dead," I say.
"I know."
"I will go to his funeral when it is set. I will tell Margaret who I am — not the council version. I will tell her her husband died because he believed me when I told him there was a variance. I owe her that."
"Yes."
"I would like you to come with me."
"I will."
We sit. The Lacanche is silent. The brass pot rack catches the light. The cold snap outside the windows is hard and clean.
"Cora is coming up at eight," I say.
"I know. Adrienne told me. The Sancerre is breathing on the counter. The white linen napkins are in the third drawer if she wants one. " He pauses. "I will be appropriate, Quinn."
"You will be Julian Vance. That is enough."
"It is rarely enough."
"It will be today."
---
I work in my study from three to seven. The audit is filed; the work that remains is forward-looking.
I am writing a memo for Hawkes for Tuesday: the cleanup work, the deferral schedule, the seventeen Vance Holdings subsidiaries that need to be re-examined under the new chain of custody, the four cold-vault accounts that need to be re-bonded under the council's new oversight protocol.
The 1948 Polish bearer bond is in the Faraday safe in the Vault Room with a chain-of-custody seal across it.
The brass pencil's cap goes on, off, on, off in my left hand while I type.
The Bloomberg terminal in the corner blinks green at the close of the Asian markets.
The radiator under the window holds silent — the gas line was retrofitted in 2019; this one keeps its peace, where the library radiator ticks.
At seven Adrienne brings me a glass of the Sancerre.
She sets it on the desk and stays only long enough to speak.
She says, "Tiens, Ms. Quinn. Drink half of that before your friend comes up.
She is going to look at you with the careful eyes of a woman who has been waiting for you to call her for thirteen days, and you should have one glass of wine in your blood when she does. Capito."
"Capito, Adrienne."
She goes.
I drink half of the Sancerre.
---
Sebastian brings Cora up at eight on the dot. The elevator chime; the foyer door; her step on the black granite — Cora walks the way she has always walked, like she is about to step on something she dares to step on. I am at the foyer before the door is closed.
She is in jeans and the leather jacket she has had since 2019, the one with the small tear at the cuff she has never repaired.
Her honey-brown hair is short and choppy and messy from the wind on the lobby plaza.
Her hazel eyes find me. She exhales hard once — one short breath, the kind she gives at the end of a long sentence she has been holding inside her chest.
We hug. She is a head shorter than I am; her arms come around my ribs; she squeezes harder than she ever has; I squeeze back. She smells like the cardamom-orange bitters she carries in her bag and like the cold from outside and like Cora.