Chapter 5 #2
They moved out en masse, crossing that enormous lobby. The clients had all departed. Several of the secretaries were standing, putting on their coats. They filed out, calling out cheerful good-byes.
There was a happy atmosphere in this company, Chloe saw. Her brother had created something good, together with Sam Reston and the man still holding her elbow, Mike Keillor. They had created an atmosphere of harmony, as unmistakable as that created by her nuns at the Sacred Heart.
Chloe had felt her heart lift, even that first day.
A new girl, a damaged new girl, from another country.
Shy and unused to much contact with people.
The transition to London had been so fast she’d barely had time to dread it by the time she’d arrived and discovered she didn’t have to dread anything.
Just watching the way the nuns treated the girls, the way the girls interacted with each other, it had been such a joy. No coldness, no withdrawal, no hidden cruelty. Just happiness and serenity.
That’s what she was seeing here. The body language of people who worked in a successful environment and who worked well together, in an atmosphere of respect.
Next to her, Mike looked so serious. Harry was beaming, Sam had his arm around his wife’s waist, bending down to her and smiling.
Only Mike wasn’t smiling. Harry and Sam seemed somehow uncomplicated next to Mike.
Reading their body language easily, in Sam and Harry, Chloe could see two contented men, happily married, loose and relaxed.
Mike was harder to read. He didn’t look particularly happy but he didn’t look unhappy either.
He was just serious. And close by her. Like her shadow, always in proximity.
Anyone who didn’t know them walking out the company offices and heading down the big corridor would have assumed that there were three couples.
Harry and Ellen. Sam and Nicole. And Mike and her.
His broad shoulder rubbed against hers as they walked down the corridor.
She was a slow walker, but he kept pace with her exactly, as if that were his normal speed, when actually she’d seen his normal speed when he came in, zipping across the huge lobby area in a couple of seconds.
She had never been so conscious of another human being’s presence.
He was so large it felt like he had his own gravity field around him.
She had to work, and work hard, to keep from looking at him and—surprisingly—from trying to get even closer.
He still held her by the elbow, not a hard grip but one she imagined she’d have to make an effort to break.
Not for anything in the world would she want break his grip. She couldn’t even begin to imagine wanting to. His grip felt wonderful.
So here she was, walking down the corridor, having somehow acquired four new family members and the fifth—well, he didn’t feel like family so much as a man interested in a woman, utterly focused on her.
God, who would have thought such a reversal of fortune could happen in only a couple of hours?
Two hours ago, she’d walked this same hallway, sick with anxiety, trembling with piercing fear and tenuous hope. Completely alone in the world, without a compass or even a heading.
On her way over in the taxi, she’d game-played how the encounter would work out.
When she allowed the tiniest chink to open inside her to let just the smallest ray of hope beam inside, she’d thought that maybe, just maybe, they could…
what? Maybe have lunch together? Talk, certainly.
She’d imagined it would be awkward, but she didn’t care.
She’d been doing awkward for a long time now. All her life, in fact.
And she’d try to dance around the big 800-pound gorilla—why didn’t their mom’s sister adopt both of them?
Chloe found the answer to that in a diary kept in the safe, tucked away among bank statements as if even in a safe, it wasn’t supposed to be found.
In it her adoptive mother described what she found after the authorities had tracked Lauren down as the sister of Carol Bolt née Tyler, deceased.
Lauren had reluctantly flown, alone, to San Diego, the new bride of a man she was slowly beginning to realize had sick desires and a tendency toward violence.
But he was rich and powerful and Lauren wanted that. Craved it.
Unwilling duty brought Lauren to the Open Clinic in San Diego, which she’d noted with distaste in her diary was a ‘poor person’s hospital’.
Chloe could almost feel Lauren’s hostility rising off the pages like steam as she wrote of seeing Christine, her niece, a small bundle, heavily sedated, almost every bone in her body broken, lying barely alive, a tiny lump on the hospital bed.
Then she’d gone to see her nephew. A tall, big boy. As strong as a man, and dangerous. He’d already killed another man. She’d watched from outside as he’d raged violently, hurling dishes at the wall, screaming his fury at the world.
No contest. Her husband could possibly tolerate her adopting a little girl who probably wouldn’t live. A big strong man-child who was violent? No way.
Chloe understood very well that Lauren had condemned Harry to social services. Lauren had refused to rescue Harry, refused to take him home with her.
Harry so far had been nothing but happy that Chloe had survived. Still, she’d been perfectly prepared to accept his bitterness that he hadn’t been rescued along with her.
She’d been ready for anything—from tepid acceptance to anger. She’d even have accepted it, in exchange for just seeing him. Just knowing that there was someone else in the world she was related to.
And if he held her at arm’s length, she’d understand. Maybe they could meet once a year and with time, over the years, maybe some of the awkwardness would pass, if he wasn’t too angry. Maybe they could exchange Christmas cards, the occasional email.
She’d have been grateful for the smallest crumbs he’d be willing to offer.
Not in any way had she allowed herself to imagine what had actually happened—full, immediate, warm acceptance into his life. Being instantly folded into his family. Into an extended family because unlike herself, Harry had managed to forge strong relations. He’d created an actual brotherhood.