Chapter 3
THREE
Chloe drank her tea, the cup making a light tinkling sound as she put it back on its saucer. Her hands were trembling slightly. Did the two men notice? Probably. Both of them were watching her very carefully.
Odd. In her experience, men didn’t have great powers of observation. Most men were so wrapped up in themselves they barely noticed the outside world unless it impacted them in some way.
These two men seemed observant, however. Which is what she wanted, of course. She wanted to be listened to, to be heard. By Harry Bolt, though, not Michael Keillor.
The only thing was that, right now, Michael Keillor seemed to be the most responsive. Harry Bolt just stared at her.
Both men were completely opaque to her, which was unusual.
She could usually get a pretty good handle on people within the first few minutes.
There were so many tells—body language, their eyes, the way they were dressed, their tone of voice, the language they used.
Even the way they breathed. At times, she thought she could read people’s auras, though she didn’t have any training in that.
Just a lifetime of observation, on the outside looking in.
It was impossible to read these two. Their clothes were nondescript. Good quality, comfortable, not particularly fashionable. Expensive work clothes for busy men who dealt with the world and didn’t sit behind desks.
They were giving her a lot of space and time. She was using way too much of it.
Her hands fell to her lap, started worrying the edges of the big manila envelope that held her past. And perhaps her future.
“Mr. Bolt,” she began.
“Harry.” His voice was very deep, almost as deep as his partner’s. “Please call me Harry. And this is Mike.” He nodded to the powerfully-built man next to him.
Something deep inside her quivered at the sound of Harry’s voice.
“Mr.—ahm. Harry. I lied. I lied to your receptionist. I told her I only needed fifteen minutes of your time. But I’m afraid it will take longer than that.
I’m really sorry I didn’t make an appointment.
“Her hands clutched the edges of the envelope as she made an offer she hoped he’d refuse.
“I can make an appointment now and come back later, if this inconveniences you.”
“No problem.” He sat back in his big office chair, eyes never leaving hers. He reached out and pressed a button. “Yeah, Marisa. Cancel my appointments for the next…hour?”
His partner, Mike, leaned forward, too. “Marisa, cancel my appointments, too.”
“An hour for Mr. Keillor as well,” Harry said decisively and lifted his finger from the button. “So, Ms. Mason, we’re both free and you can take as much time as you want.”
Okay. Okay. Chloe stopped herself from rocking back and forth in anxiety. Where to begin?
At the beginning, of course.
“I had an accident,” she began slowly. “A very bad one, when I was small. I don’t remember anything about it. But as a consequence, most of my childhood and my early teens was spent in and out of hospitals. By the time I was fifteen, I’d had fourteen surgeries.”
Both men winced. “I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Mason,” Harry Bolt said.
“Chloe, please.” She tried on a smile but could tell by the feel of her facial muscles that it was weak.
“I, ahm, I didn’t tell you this to gain your sympathy.
” She didn’t like talking about it at all, and never told anyone except medical personnel.
It had been bad enough living through it.
People she met could wonder why sometimes she moved stiffly, but she didn’t feel obliged to tell anyone anything.
“The reason I told you is that my—my health problems ate up my childhood and teen years. My injuries were so severe that several times the doctors gave up on me. Apparently, I am alive by a miracle. The side effect is that whole chunks of me—of my history—are gone. I can remember very little, in fact, other than long stays in the hospital and rehabilitation in a succession of clinics. I didn’t even attend school until I was fifteen.
There would have been too many interruptions.
My, um, my parents arranged for private tutors to come to me in the hospital.
I was fifteen by the time I could stand and walk and even think of leading a normal life. ”
She studied Harry Bolt’s eyes, then switched her gaze to Mike Keillor.
It was a tossup as to who was paying her more attention.
She’d rarely been on the receiving end of such intense male scrutiny.
It seemed to her that they were listening carefully to her every word and, perhaps, even to the words she wasn’t saying.
She took a deep breath because the minefield began now.
“I never thought to ask my parents what happened. My parents were very…distant. That’s the only word that really works.
” Until the man she knew as her father got all-too-close.
“My, um, my father inherited a great deal of money and then he and my mother founded a highly successful real estate business. My mother used to come to visit me a couple of times a month in the hospital, but later, she got caught up in the company and didn’t have much time.
In the end, she came about once a month to visit.
I needed such intense rehabilitation between surgeries, they found it easier to leave me in long-stay hospitals, instead of ferrying me back and forth. They could afford it.”
And just like that she was pinged back to long, pain-wracked years in luxury clinics, completely alone. The nurses her only human contacts as they rotated in and out of ICU.
She’d longed desperately for the love of her parents and it was never there. It was just this blank hole into which she uselessly poured her love until she learned to stop it.
She’d waited eagerly for her mother’s visits, every time, all through childhood.
Never learning. The visits always followed the same script.
Her mother would arrive with an expensive present or two, sit on the edge of the visitor’s chair with her coat on, ask how Chloe was feeling, not listen to the answer, visibly quivering to get away, leaving after a quarter of an hour.
Often leaving Chloe in tears until she simply gave up on making her mother care for her, because it just wasn’t going to happen.
“I read a lot in the hospital. There wasn’t much else to do.
I watched lots of movies and read a lot of books.
They became my life. I rarely saw my parents.
About the time I became a teenager I realized that I didn’t have in any way the feelings for my parents that people had in books and movies or that the nurses seemed to have for their families.
It just wasn’t there. No good feelings, no bad ones.
My parents were just these—these distant people who showed up now and again.
My mother more than my father. I saw him just a couple of times a year while I was in the clinics.
And then finally, when I was fifteen, there were no more surgeries scheduled.
The doctors said I was as well as I was ever going to be.
I was released, free to go home. My parents had moved house several times.
When I got out of the hospital, I was taken to a home I’d never seen before, in a part of town I didn’t in any way know.
A bedroom had been set up for me by an interior decorator.
That first week was incredibly strange, as I was in a brand-new setting with parents I barely knew. ”
“Where was this?” Michael Keillor asked quietly.
“Boston.”
“And yet you speak with a slight English accent.”
So far, Harry Bolt hadn’t spoken much. There was no doubt he was listening, though. Chloe had the feeling he was listening intently with every sense he had, not just hearing. And yet, though she Harry Bolt’s full attention, it was Michael Keillor who was asking her questions.
The reason she spoke with a faint English accent which she’d picked up subconsciously was hard to explain, in every way there was.
She sat there, trying to put the words together. This was so hard. It was a moment of her life she’d tried to understand, tried to forget, tried to forgive. Nothing worked.
Chloe took in a deep breath, watching the two men. She was taking up their time but there was absolutely no impatience vibes coming from them. She was familiar with people’s exasperation with her when she needed time to think about what she was saying. One of her many, many failings.
Only she didn’t feel it was a failing here.
Both men were watching her, listening carefully to her, allowing her to talk at her own pace.
She was all too familiar with people’s body language when she had to think over what she was saying.
The impatient huffs of breath, leg jiggling or foot tapping.
Looking up at the ceiling, looking down at the watch, doodling. She’d seen it all.
She wasn’t seeing it here. She was seeing two men hearing her out with no signs of anything but interest.
And since they were, she didn’t stammer. It came out as smoothly as if she were discussing the plot of a movie she’d once seen.
“When I was finally released, because there wasn’t anything else medicine could do for me, it was summer and there was no school.
I was actually ahead two grades because about the only thing I could do in the hospitals and clinics was study.
I didn’t have any friends and I had had nothing to do but read.
I found it…hard, being home. My father acted very strange around me and my mother—my mother acted strange when he acted strange.
They were both very strange, though I didn’t have much to compare them with.