Chapter 2
“Dr. Samuel Bennett.”
Damian looked at me.
I stopped breathing.
Adrian frowned.
“You know him?”
I couldn’t answer immediately.
Damian did.
“Her father.”
My eyes stayed fixed on the page.
My father’s name.
Samuel Bennett, M.D.
Written in clean block lettering.
A man who had been dead for six years.
We left the gala twenty minutes later.
Damian gave no explanations.
Neither did I.
Boston slid past the car windows in streaks of gold and dark glass while I held copies of the papers against my lap.
My father’s name seemed to rise from every page.
Dr. Samuel Bennett.
Medical authorization.
Patient transfer.
Crosswell Private Medical Services.
Signature verified.
Except the signature wasn’t my father’s.
I knew that before Damian asked.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“My father crossed his sevens.”
Damian looked at the page.
“These aren’t crossed.”
“No.”
“And he didn’t work at Crosswell.”
“No.”
“When did he die?”
“Six years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
The words sounded strange coming from Damian Cross.
Not insincere.
Just careful.
As if condolences were another language he had learned late in life.
“Thank you.”
The car turned onto Atlantic Avenue.
For a while neither of us spoke.
Then Damian said, “What kind of doctor was he?”
“A cardiologist.”
“Boston?”
“Cambridge mostly. Later private practice.”
“Was he good?”
I smiled despite myself.
“He was terrible at remembering birthdays and excellent at remembering arteries.”
Damian waited.
“My father loved medicine,” I continued. “Not the prestige. Not the title. He loved knowing how things worked. When I was eight, he bought me a toy stethoscope and spent an entire Saturday explaining heart valves.”
“Did you understand?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But you became a nurse.”
“I liked people more than valves.”
His gaze moved toward the window.
“My father disliked doctors.”
“Why?”
“He believed needing anyone was dangerous.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.”
There was no bitterness in his voice.
That somehow made it sadder.
I looked down at the forms.
“Whoever made these knew my father’s name.”
“Yes.”
“Why him?”
“That’s the question.”
My phone vibrated.
My mother.
I stared at the screen.
Damian noticed.
“You should answer.”
“At midnight?”
“If my mother called me at midnight, I’d assume someone was either ill or she’d discovered another reason I should marry.”
I laughed.
The sound startled me.
Then I answered.
“Mom?”
“Clara?”
She sounded awake.
Too awake.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.”
“You were about to.”
A pause.
“Are you still at that charity gala?”
I looked at Damian.
“Leaving now.”
“With Mr. Cross?”
Another pause.
“How do you know that?”
“The invitation said Cross Foundation.”
“You read my invitation?”
“It was on your kitchen counter.”
“You were watering my plants, not investigating my mail.”
“I can multitask.”
Damian’s mouth twitched.
I turned toward the window.
“Mom, did Dad ever know anyone named Cross?”
Silence.
Not hesitation.
Silence.
The kind that contained an answer.
I sat straighter.
“Mom?”
“What makes you ask that?”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Did he?”
Damian turned toward me.
My mother exhaled.
“Clara, where are you?”
“In a car.”
“With Damian Cross?”
I stared at Damian.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Then my mother said something I had never expected to hear.
“Come home.”
My mother lived in the same narrow brick house in Cambridge where I had grown up.
She had refused every suggestion that she move after my father died.
“Your father finally figured out how to fix the downstairs radiator,” she always said. “I’m not leaving now.”
At twelve forty-five in the morning, the porch light was on.
Damian’s driver stopped at the curb.
I gathered the papers.
“You can go,” I told Damian.
“No.”
“My mother invited me, not you.”
“She specifically asked whether you were with me.”
“That is not an invitation.”
“I’ve attended dinners with senators on less.”
“Mr. Cross—”
“Damian.”
I stopped.
He did too.
The word remained between us.
“You’ve been Clara all evening,” he said. “I think we can retire Mr. Cross.”
“That seems premature.”
“It’s my name.”
“So is Mr. Cross.”
He opened the car door.
“You’re difficult.”
“You employ criminals.”
“Allegedly.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Then I climbed out.
He followed.
My mother opened the door before we knocked.
Linda Bennett was sixty-two, five foot three, and capable of making a fully grown police officer wipe his shoes before entering her kitchen.
She took one look at Damian.
“Oh.”
Damian, to his credit, looked almost nervous.
“Mrs. Bennett.”
“You’re taller than I expected.”
He blinked.
“So I’m told.”
She looked at my dress.
Then at him.
Then at me.
“This is not how you left my house.”
“I changed at my apartment.”
“You should wear red more often.”
“Mom.”
“What? You should.”
Then she stepped aside.
“Both of you come in.”
Damian looked at me.
I whispered, “Don’t argue.”
“With your mother?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good instinct.”
My mother led us into the kitchen.
It still looked almost exactly as it had when I was seventeen.
Blue cabinets.
A wooden table scarred by decades of coffee mugs and homework.
A crooked photograph of my parents on Cape Cod.
My mother poured tea.
At one in the morning.
Because Bennett family crises apparently required Earl Grey.
Damian sat at my childhood kitchen table looking entirely out of place in a black tuxedo.
My mother placed a floral mug in front of him.
He looked at it.
It said WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA.
“That was my father’s,” I said.
“I gathered.”
My mother sat.
“What happened?”
I placed the papers on the table.
She saw my father’s name.
The color left her face.
I had my answer before she spoke.
“You knew,” I said.
She touched the first page.
“Not this.”
“But something.”
“Yes.”
I waited.
My mother looked at Damian.
“I made your father a promise.”
Damian went very still.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
Thomas Cross had died nine years earlier.
Officially, he had been a businessman and philanthropist.
Unofficially, judging by what everyone in Boston seemed to know, he had built the empire Damian inherited.
My mother looked at me.
“Your father treated him.”
I frowned.
“Dad was his cardiologist?”
“Not officially.”
“When?”
“More than twenty years ago.”
I tried to understand.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because your father asked me not to.”
“Why?”
My mother took a slow breath.
“Because Samuel believed some secrets protected people.”
Damian’s expression hardened slightly.
“And did they?”
My mother met his gaze.
“No,” she said. “Not always.”
The kitchen seemed smaller.
She folded her hands.
“Your father came to Samuel late one night. Chest pain. He refused a hospital.”
“That sounds like him,” Damian said.
My mother almost smiled.
“Samuel treated him privately. After that, Thomas called occasionally. Sometimes for himself. Sometimes for someone who didn’t want to appear in an emergency room.”
Crosswell before Crosswell.
My father.
The thought made something shift inside me.
“Dad treated your people?”
Damian shook his head.
“I didn’t know.”
“You inherited the clinic.”
“Crosswell opened five years ago.”
One year after my father died.
I looked at him.
“Then why is it called Crosswell?”
“My mother chose the name.”
My mother looked up sharply.
“What?”
Damian turned toward her.
“She said my father once wanted to build a private medical center where nobody would be denied treatment because of who they were.”
My mother closed her eyes.
“Oh, Thomas.”
“What?”
She stood.
Walked toward the hallway.
“Mom?”
She disappeared into my father’s old study.
A minute later she returned with a small wooden box.
I recognized it immediately.
Dad kept old fountain pens inside.
At least, that was what I had always believed.
My mother set it on the table.
“I promised Samuel I would give this to you if the Cross family ever came asking questions.”
“Which Cross?”
“You.”
She looked at Damian.
“Or your sister.”
Damian froze.
“Sofia?”
“Yes.”
I looked between them.
“How did Dad know Sofia?”
Neither answered.
My mother opened the box.
Inside were no pens.
There were letters.
Photographs.
A brass key.
And one folded document with my father’s handwriting across the front.
FOR CLARA.
My throat tightened.
“Why didn’t you give me this?”
“Because no Cross came asking.”
“I work for them.”
“That wasn’t the same thing.”
“It feels fairly similar.”
My mother’s eyes filled with regret.
“I was trying to honor what your father wanted.”
“And what did I want?”
She looked down.
“I didn’t ask.”
The answer was quiet.
It hurt more because she didn’t defend herself.
For a moment, I was sixteen again, furious about a curfew.
Twenty-one, fighting about nursing school.
Twenty-eight, standing beside her after my father’s funeral while both of us pretended the other one was stronger.
Then I saw her hands trembling.
I reached across the table.
She took my hand.
May you like
“I should have told you there were things I didn’t understand,” she whispered. “I thought silence was the same as keeping you safe.”
I squeezed her fingers.
