Chapter 6: He Came Anyway
Harrison arrived at nine forty-three the next morning.
Clare heard the car before she saw it — the particular sound of a Mercedes on a freshly plowed street, too fast for the conditions, braking hard at the last moment.
She was sitting in the chair by the window with a cup of tea and her prenatal vitamins when the headlights swept across the front of the store.
Eleanor appeared at the top of the stairs.
She had heard it too.
"You don't have to see him," she said.
"I know."
"I can call Gerald.
He's—"
"I'll see him." Clare set down her cup.
"He came three hundred miles.
He'll break the door down if I don't."
She stood, smoothed her sweater over her stomach, and unlocked the front door before Harrison could knock.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
His coat was the same one from Christmas Eve, slightly wrinkled now, the collar turned up against the cold.
His eyes went immediately to her stomach, then to her face, then past her into the store.
"You're all right," he said.
The relief in his voice was real.
That was the worst part.
"I'm fine."
"Clare, I've been—" He stopped when he saw Eleanor standing at the foot of the stairs.
The silence lasted four seconds.
"Harrison," Eleanor said.
Not a greeting.
Just his name, placed in the room like an object on a table.
His jaw tightened.
He looked back at Clare.
"Can we speak privately?"
"No."
"Clare—"
"Whatever you say to me, you can say in front of Eleanor." Clare stepped back and let him into the store.
"She's your sister.
You've had years to speak to her privately.
You chose not to."
Harrison stepped inside.
He didn't look at Eleanor again.
He focused entirely on Clare with the practiced intensity she had once mistaken for devotion.
"You've been speaking to someone," he said.
"Diane Marsh."
Clare said nothing.
"Whatever she told you, there's context you don't have.
The company finances are complicated.
My father didn't understand the full picture in his last year — he was ill, Clare, his judgment—"
"He was ill," Clare said.
"So you restructured the accounting team while he was ill.
So you could move faster."
Harrison's mouth closed.
"The cash payment to Dr.
Renner," Clare said.
"Thirty thousand dollars.
What was that for?"
"That is not what it looks like."
"Then tell me what it looks like."
"Renner had a patient who was threatening to go to the medical board with a complaint that had nothing to do with us.
I helped him manage it.
It was a favor between—"
"Stop." Clare's voice was quiet.
"Harrison.
Stop."
He stopped.
"I sat in that waiting room for two years," she said.
"I gave myself injections every morning for fourteen months.
I lost a pregnancy.
I blamed my body.
I thanked you for finding that clinic." She looked at him.
"Was any of it real?"
"The baby is real."
"That's not what I asked."
He moved toward her.
"Clare, I love you.
Whatever else has happened—"
"Sienna Blake."
He stopped moving.
"How long?"
"It isn't—"
"How long, Harrison?"
He looked at the floor.
"Three years."
Three years.
Their daughter — Clare had started thinking of the baby as a daughter, though they hadn't confirmed it — was due in eight weeks.
Three years ago, Clare had been in the second year of fertility treatment, sitting in Dr.
Renner's waiting room, believing her husband was fighting for their family.
"Get out," Clare said.
"I'm not leaving you here.
You're thirty-one weeks pregnant, you're alone in—"
"She's not alone." Eleanor's voice came from behind Clare.
Steady.
Flat.
"She has family."
Harrison looked at Eleanor for the first time since he'd walked in.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, not quite.
Something older and more complicated.
"Eleanor." His voice changed.
"I know what you think of me."
"I don't think anything of you," Eleanor said.
"I stopped a long time ago."
"The deed was a business decision.
Father's will was going to create a governance problem.
I needed—"
"You needed twenty million dollars that wasn't yours," Eleanor said.
"Don't dress it up."
Harrison's composure cracked at the edges.
Not much.
But Clare had been watching his face for eight years and she saw it.
"I can fix this," he said.
He was looking at Clare again.
"The Eleanor situation, the company accounts — I can restructure.
I'll bring in independent auditors.
I'll make it right."
"You'll make it right," Clare said.
"Yes."
"Because you want to, or because Diane Marsh has a file."
His silence was the answer.
"I want you to leave," Clare said.
"I want you to drive back to Manhattan.
I want you to call your attorney — your personal one, not the estate one — and tell him that Eleanor Parker is going to be reinstated to her full inheritance share and that you are prepared to cooperate with a financial review of Mercer House Hospitality." She paused.
"And I want you to understand that if you don't, Diane Marsh will make the first call to the financial crimes unit herself.
She has William's authorization to do so."
Harrison's face went very still.
"You'd do that," he said.
"With the baby coming."
"You did this," Clare said.
"With the baby coming."
He stood in the middle of the bookstore for a long moment.
Books on every side.
A small store in a small town that his father's money had tried to erase and hadn't managed to.
"I'll call my attorney," he said finally.
"Today," Clare said.
"Today."
He turned toward the door.
Then he stopped, his hand on the frame, his back to both of them.
"The fertility treatment," he said.
"I didn't—" He stopped.
Started again.
"I wanted the baby too, Clare.
Whatever else.
That was real."
Clare looked at his back.
She said nothing.
He walked out.
The door closed behind him.
Eleanor crossed the room and turned the lock.
Clare stood where she was for a moment, then sat down in the chair by the window.
Outside, the Mercedes reversed into the street and drove away, its taillights disappearing around the corner.
The baby moved.
"I know," Clare said softly.
"I know."
Eleanor sat in the chair across from her.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
"He'll stall," Eleanor said eventually.
"He'll call his attorney and they'll look for a way to delay."
"I know."
"We should call Diane this morning."
"I know that too." Clare looked out at the empty street.
"Give me ten minutes."
Eleanor nodded and went to put the kettle on.
May you like
Clare sat with her hands in her lap and watched the snow settle on the windowsill, one thin layer at a time, quiet and patient and entirely indifferent to what Harrison Mercer wanted.
Ten minutes later, she picked up the phone.
