She checked her phone. One email, from Marla the paralegal. Straus and Clarke, the two most senior partners, had been looking for her, had been “surprised” to hear she was out of the office.
Any update on Rainier payment?Hailey sent off with a prayer. The negative reply was instant, and still Hailey couldn’t bring herself to text David. She dragged herself from the bed, grabbed the $250 Vilebrequin swim shorts she had bought for Mack, and tossed them onto the coffee table in front of him. She saw him grimace at the print.
“These are some very expensive turtles,” she said to him, leaning down to pop the tags. “Come on, they want an outing.”
The long hallways were empty, and Hailey was glad no one was around; she had not sprung for additional beachwear, and they were both in sneakers and T-shirts, looking for all the world like they’d just wandered in from Marc’s. But poolside it was another story: even in his delirium she saw Mack gape at the red bathing suit as she undressed. He and his turtles followed her unprompted into the water and to the far side of the empty pool. He still wasn’t saying much, but that was fine with Hailey, and long after the sun dipped down into the ocean the two of them floated there on the edge of the infinity, only their elbows touching.
* * *
Hailey came out of the shower the color of a lobster; her every pore had been opened to maximum capacity, and the mirror above the mini bar in the living room area steamed up as she opened the bathroom door.
“You okay?” Mack wanted to know. “Better?”
“I think it must have been the chlorine. Chlorine and exhaustion.” Mack had rallied, had pounced on her like a tiger when they’d come back from the pool, but Hailey had panicked, found herself unable to breathe as the room spun around her. She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself. Nor did she want to try.
Mack was back on the sofa, and Hailey saw that he had opened Leonora’s box. She knelt over him in her towel to inspect the documents he’d laid out on the coffee table. One was a marriage license, dated 1977.
“Oh wow, look. Both your parents’ signatures are there.”
“I was just thinking she should have run a mile.”
Hailey thought so too, but said in her best divorce lawyer voice, “You can’t ever know that when you start out.” She examined the whisper-thin sheet of paper, tried to picture them in some New York registry office, completely oblivious of what lay before them. The document felt cursed; she put it back down on the table.
Mack was already moving on. He had found an old black-and-white photograph of two small children and presumably their parents, scowling out at the camera from the steps of a partially built house. It could have been almost Civil War–era, based on their clothing and the state of the paper. The background behind them was one of desolation, all barren fields and dust Hailey could almost feel on her tongue.
“That looks likeLittle House on the Prairie,” she said to Mack. “Who are they?”
“I have no idea, how sad is that? No names on the back, so I guess that info dies with Mom.”
Hailey could feel him teetering on some kind of precipice. She held up the room service menu. “Are we ordering in or going out somewhere? I don’t think we have the right clothes for any of the restaurants in the hotel... except maybe the staff kitchen.”
“Definitely in. I’m never leaving this room again.”
“You’d better win the lottery then.”
Mack did not answer, and the air was heavy with a question: Had they already? They were getting free money in the mail... wasn’t that the same thing? A Publishers Clearing House of sorts?
Hailey slipped into a logoed bathrobe and continued her examination of the in-room dining offering. An order of chicken fingers was $45. For a minute she thought Mack shared her indignation; he gasped just as her eyes landed on the $32 piece of flourless chocolate cake. But his attention was still on his mother’s box, and a handwritten letter he had found within it.
Dear Leonora,
He won’t take my money. You probably already know that.
You’ll say it’s his decision, and I guess you’re right. But he’s just a kid. A smart one—you did good. I went up to Duke, just to lay eyes on him there. He’s gotten so tall.
Maybe you’re happy that he hates me. Maybe you told him to. But I’m here, like always. We both know I’ll never, ever stop being his father. I’ll always look after him, I promise you that. And I will love you forever, and always wish I’d taken you both with me.
Yours,
Tommy
“I thought your father’s name was Warner?” Hailey said when she had finished reading.
“Warner Thomas. I don’t remember what she called him. I was so little when he left; I don’t remember her calling him anything but ‘your father.’ ” Mack leaned back and closed his eyes; she was losing him again.
“It must be some comfort to know that he was still looking out for you. Even after you told him to go away. Which he deserved,” she added hastily.
It took Mack a minute to reply. “I guess. Except I thought he had been looking out for me all along. I thought he paid for my mom, and then I thought he was Sunshine Enterprises... I mean, how could I just assume that?”
