Chapter 15 #2
Then delete it.
Then draft it again. Too emotional. Delete. Again. Too vague. Delete. Again. Too much like a woman trying not to sound afraid.
That last one makes me angry enough to get it right.
Subject: Saint Claire Foundation / Cornelius Saint Claire original trust language
Dear Mr. Everhart,
My name is Livia Crane. I am a senior conservator and provenance researcher at Bianchi Conservation Institute in Florence.
For several years, our institute has worked on restoration and authentication projects funded in whole or in part by the Saint Claire Foundation.
During a routine review of an amended access protocol received today, I discovered irregularities in the provenance documentation of multiple foundation-linked projects.
Specifically, my name and credentials appear to have been used to authenticate chain-of-custody work I didn't perform, on more than one occasion.
I have also reviewed public copies of the foundation’s original governing documents and noted language attributed to Cornelius Saint Claire that appears to prohibit restricted access to conservation, ownership, and authentication records where provenance is incomplete, obscured, or subject to unresolved claim.
Your name appears on the original filing materials connected to the trust. I realize this message is unusual.
However, if you have any knowledge of Cornelius Saint Claire’s original intent regarding access, provenance integrity, or independent review, I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you confidentially.
I can provide documentation upon request.
Regards,
L. Crane
I read it three times.
It is cold.
Professional.
Useful.
It says nothing about Halston’s signature. Nothing about Creed’s number sitting inside my phone like a loaded match. Nothing about the fact that I was once Livia Saint Claire on a courthouse document no one in New York seems to remember unless it is useful to them.
It will have to be enough.
I hover over send.
For ten years, this body has carried evidence no one knew how to read.
A tremor. A scar. A headache in storms. A sudden nausea at certain legal phrases.
A complete inability to sit in hospital waiting rooms without wanting to climb out of my own skin.
Everyone wanted to make it medical because medical things can be managed. Named. Scheduled. Billed.
But bodies remember context even when people lie about facts.
Mine has been trying to tell me all day.
Creed’s voice.
Halston’s signature.
Cornelius’s clause.
Fitzhenry Everhart.
I press send.
The email leaves with a soft digital whoosh.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Of course, nothing happens. This is an email, not divine intervention. There are no thunderclaps. No shattering windows. No old lawyer appearing in a puff of estate-planning smoke.
Just the green checkmark.
Sent.
I close the laptop.
The studio becomes very quiet. Not peaceful. Never that. But quieter than my pulse.
I gather the folder, slide the documents back into order, and put everything into my locked drawer. Then I take the institute’s spare blanket from the cabinet, because apparently I am the sort of woman who commits potential professional sabotage and then requires textiles.
The couch in my studio is narrow, old, and upholstered in a fabric that has seen things. I lie down anyway, shoes still on, one arm over my eyes.
I should go home.
I should eat.
I should call Moises before he worries enough to come back.
I should not think about Halston’s hand signing yesterday’s date.
I should not think about Creed’s name on my phone.
I should not wonder if somewhere in New York, something has shifted without me knowing.
I press my hand flat against my stomach until everything settles.
“Not yet,” I whisper.
Eventually, I get up.
I'm not sleeping in my studio. I have rules about this.
The studio is for work. The studio is for the woman who fixes things.
The apartment is for the woman who has to live with what fixing things costs her.
I have spent eight years keeping the two of them in separate rooms, and I'm not going to start collapsing the difference at three in the morning, no matter how thoroughly the night has earned it.
I double-check the locked drawer. I leave the spare blanket folded on the couch where I found it. I look at the portrait one more time on the way out.
“Watch the place,” I tell her.
She doesn't respond. She doesn't need to. We have, at this point, an understanding.
Florence at three in the morning is its own country.
Bruno doesn't start on the first try because Bruno has principles.
He starts on the third, with a cough that suggests he is doing me a personal favor.
The streets are wet and almost empty. A waiter at the trattoria three doors down is stacking chairs and smoking.
He lifts a hand at me as I pass. I lift one back.
This is the small civic ritual of a city that has decided I am allowed to live here.
I ride home through streets I know in my body more than my mind.
The cool air on my face is the first honest sensation of the night.
I catch myself wishing the ride were longer.
Then I catch myself wishing for any reason not to be at home yet, with a phone, with a contact list, with a body that has just spent six hours doing the most important work of its professional life and now has nothing to do but feel.
I park Bruno. I climb the three flights to my apartment. The hall light is on a timer, and it gives up before I make it to my door, the way it does every night, the way Florence does so many things—generously, then with a swift expiration.
Inside, the apartment is dark and small and mine.
The kitchen counter is exactly where I left it.
The plant on the windowsill, which Moises waters more reliably than I do, leans toward the window the way it always does.
The bed in the next room is made because I make it every morning, regardless of what kind of night I had, because made beds are an agreement I have with myself that I have not yet lost.
I don't turn on the overhead light.
I drop my keys into the bowl by the door. I peel off my coat. I leave my bag on the chair where my bag lives. I go into the bedroom and lie down on top of the covers, still in my work clothes, because the work clothes are what I survived the night in, and I'm not yet ready to take them off.
I close my eyes.
The phone, on the nightstand, lights up.
Once.
Then again.
Then a third time, in the particular pattern of a number that is not stopping until someone answers.
I don't move.
The room is too quiet. The bed is too cold on the side I don't use. The hour is too late for anyone in Italy to be calling me.
I open one eye.
The screen, from across the bed, glows in the dark.
A New York area code.
A number I don't recognize.
A number that, somewhere inside my chest, I do.