Chapter 4 - “I know that.”
“Then stop talking like you are.”
“I need you to promise.”
“Nora, you’re exhausted.”
“I need you to promise.”
“No.”
The word struck Victor with the force of a slap, though no one had touched him.
In the recording, Nora was silent.
Then she said, “Why?”
“Because your sister lives three states away, and she doesn’t know anything about our life.”
“She knows me.”
“She doesn’t know what the children need.”
“I know what they need.”
“And I don’t?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you keep saying.”
Dr.
Bell’s recorded voice interrupted.
“Mr.
Rinaldi, you need to step out for a moment.”
“No.”
“Your wife needs rest.”
“She needs to stop frightening herself.”
“I need you to leave the room.”
Victor heard himself turn away.
Then Nora said, “If I can’t care for them, you’ll take them.”
His recorded voice answered immediately.
“Of course I will.”
The present-day Victor’s stomach tightened.
He had meant, I will care for them.
Nora had heard, I will take them.
But the recording continued.
“You’ll put them in your house,” she said.
“Your people will raise them.
You’ll decide where they go, who sees them, what they know.”
“I’m their father.”
“And I’m asking you not to erase me.”
“I would never erase you.”
“You already erased me tonight.”
The line went quiet.
Victor could hear the faint beeping of a monitor.
Then he said, “I have to make one call.”
Nora laughed once, without humor.
“Of course you do.”
“I’ll come back.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“You said that before.”
The door opened.
Dr.
Bell said, “Victor.”
“I’ll be back,” Victor repeated.
Nora whispered, “No, you won’t.”
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
Outside the room, a cart rolled down the corridor.
A nurse laughed softly at something another nurse had said.
Ordinary sounds continued, indifferent to the fact that Victor’s memory had just been divided into before and after.
He stared at the recorder.
“I did come back,” he said.
Dr.
Bell’s expression did not change.
“The next afternoon.”
Victor remembered the warehouse.
The meeting.
His phone dying.
The explanation he gave Nora about being unable to leave.
He had told himself he had returned as quickly as possible.
He had never asked how long she had waited.
“What happened after I left?” he asked.
“She asked me to write down her sister as emergency guardian.”
“Did you?”
“I advised her to speak with an attorney.”
“Did she?”
“Not then.”
Victor rubbed both hands over his face.
“So this is what she’s been carrying?”
“This is part of it.”
“What else?”
Dr.
Bell looked toward the recorder.
“She believed you had decided the children belonged to your world more than hers.
Over the following months, every time you made a major decision without consulting her, that belief became harder to undo.”
Victor thought of the security staff he had hired without telling her.
The private nurse he had arranged after Mia developed feeding difficulties.
The account he had opened in the twins’ names.
The house in Evanston he had purchased secretly.
Each action had seemed practical.
Each one had told Nora that he trusted his own judgment more than hers.
“Why didn’t she show me the recording?”
“Because she wanted to believe the man in it was frightened and inexperienced.
She hoped you would grow into someone who understood what you had promised.”
“And when I didn’t?”
“She stopped asking.”
Victor looked down at the hospital wristband.
“What is the secret she feared?”
Dr.
Bell was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “Not that you would hurt the children.
She feared you would love them in a way that left no room for her.”
Victor’s throat tightened.
It was not the dramatic answer he had expected.
It was worse because it was ordinary.
He stood and walked to the narrow window overlooking the snow-covered courtyard.
A few dark branches trembled in the wind.
Somewhere beyond the hospital walls, Nora was caring for two fragile babies and waiting to see whether he would understand the difference between finding them and becoming worthy of them.
“Can I hear it again?” he asked.
Dr.
Bell nodded.
Victor sat back down.
This time, when the recording began, he did not listen for the moment Nora had misunderstood him.
He listened for the moments he had failed to understand her.
The answer was everywhere.
When she asked for a promise.
When she asked him not to erase her.
When she said she had been waiting.
And when she quietly accepted that he would leave.
Halfway through the recording, Victor noticed something he had missed the first time.
Beneath the hospital sounds, just before the audio ended, there was a faint second voice in the hallway.
A woman.
“Mr.
Rinaldi, your mother is on line two.
She says it’s urgent.”
Victor looked at Dr.
Bell.
“My mother?”
Dr.
Bell stopped the recording.
“You heard her that night?”
“No.”
“Then you need to ask your mother what she told the hospital before you arrived.”
Victor stared at him.
Dr.
Bell reached into a folder and removed a photocopy of an old visitor log.
At the bottom of the page, beneath Victor’s name, was another entry.
Lucia Rinaldi.
Time of arrival: 11:18 p.m.
Time of departure: 12:06 a.m.
Beside her name, in the notes column, someone had written:
Requested private consultation regarding guardianship documents.
Victor felt the room grow cold.
His mother had been at the hospital before the twins were born.
May you like
And Nora had never told him.
Neither had Lucia.
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