Chapter 5
Chapter 6 - Old Man Bennett
Richard Bennett's assistant called me at work on Monday morning and asked if I could come to his apartment at four.
She said it like it was a dentist appointment.
I did not tell David I was going.
I want to be honest about that too.
I told him I had a late meeting, and I put the nursery photo in my bag, and I drove up Lake Shore Drive with the windows down because I could not get enough air.
His apartment is on the thirty-first floor.
The elevator opens straight into the foyer.
He has a housekeeper who has been with the family longer than I have, and she took my coat and did not meet my eyes.
Richard was standing at the window with a glass of something clear in his hand.
He is eighty-two now.
He looks like a man who has never once in his life been told no.
"Claire," he said.
"Sit down."
I sat down.
He said he had heard about the boy.
He said he had heard I had been driving to the North Side asking questions, and that he understood a mother's instinct, and that he wanted to help.
Then he told me what he was prepared to do.
A trust for Lily.
Fully funded.
A house in Evanston, up by the lake, with a yard and a first-floor bedroom so she would never have to deal with stairs.
And a private investigator of his choosing, because, he said, he did not want some shelter rumor about our family floating around the internet for the rest of Lily's life.
"Quiet this down," he said.
"For the girl's sake."
I asked him who Alan Whitmore was.
He did not blink.
He said Whitmore was a doctor who had done his job in 2018 and lost his license for something unrelated, and that was the end of it.
Then I asked him about the second infant on the transfer page.
He set his glass down on the windowsill and said it was a stillbirth.
He said there was a mother in the next room who lost her baby the same night Lily was fighting for her life, and that the hospital merged the paperwork, and that David had been so wrecked by the accident and by Lily's condition that no one in the family ever spoke about that night out loud.
He said that was the whole story, and that I was tearing my own family apart over a clerical error.
I took the photo out of my bag and set it on the coffee table in front of him.
The nursery glass.
The dark coat.
The car seat.
"What did you carry out of that hospital that night?"
I asked.
Richard Bennett did not look at the photo.
He walked to the window and put both hands on the sill and looked out at the lake, and he did not answer me, and he did not answer me, and he did not answer me.
I heard the door open behind us.
David was standing in the foyer.
He had followed me.
He had his keys in his hand and his face was a mess.
"Dad," he said.
"Tell her."
Richard turned around.
He looked at his son for a long moment, and then he looked at me and said, very calmly, "Give me one week, Claire.
One week to do this the right way."
I picked up my photo and my bag and I walked to the elevator.
The doors were closing when he called after me.
"That boy has no mother, Mrs. Bennett.
Do not make him the reason you lose yours."
The doors shut.
I stood in that elevator for thirty-one floors with my heart going like a bird in a box, and when I got to the lobby I called Marcus at the shelter and asked him if he could keep Noah inside that night.
He asked me why.
I said I would explain when I got there.
David was waiting for me on the street when I came out.
He put his hand on my arm and I let him.
"One week," he said.
"That's all he's asking."
"No," I said.
May you like
"That's how long he needs to hide it."
I got in my car and drove north, and I did not look back at my husband in the rearview mirror, because I knew if I did I would turn around, and I was done turning around.
