| |
He should have anticipated this. Of course she would send it to Otto. She needed to be paid, and Otto was the one who held the funds. Just because Rafe had rejected her didn't mean she would give up. The money was too important to her and Shyla.
“She called me first, warned me what I would read.” Otto watched him with piercing attention. “Said she'd tried to get you to tell me but that you wouldn't. Explained why she felt she had to include what she'd found in the book.”
Feeling as if his joints had rusted together, he stretched out an arm and placed the dish he'd been washing next to the others on the drying mat. Then he gripped the edge of the sink and rocked on the balls of his feet, anxious energy fizzing and twitching his nerve endings. He had no clue what to say.
Otto didn't seem to require a reply. He continued on in a calm tone. “I'm going to demand she delete all mention of the scandal if she wants her money. If she doesn't, the contract is null and void as per the terms we laid out, and we won't owe her anything.”
It was what he had wanted. Not only someone to understand that the scandal had to remain buried, but for someone to take his side. If he'd told Otto like Natalie had wanted, he would have saved himself months of scheming and conniving. But he'd been trying to spare his brother, hadn't wanted him to learn the ugly truth.
The thing was...hearing Otto agree their mother's secrets had to remain hidden... It was wrong. It was wrong to demand Natalie lie for them, betray her own principles.
And she was more important than his mother's reputation or Otto's potential career.
He'd always believed causing the death of a patient in his care would be the nadir of his existence. Until now. Not trusting Natalie, not listening to her side of things, not supporting her integrity, her beliefs... That had been the biggest mistake of his life.
He'd learned to live with errors made under the intense pressure of medical training. He didn't think he could learn to live without Natalie.
“You can't do that.” Conviction rang in his tone and Otto's eyebrows rose. “Natalie's right. Hiding it would only make it look worse. And she deserves to be paid in full, no matter what.”
Otto's pale blue eyes pinned Rafe. “That's not what you told Natalie. You kicked her out because of what she'd written. I thought you’d agree with me, that this was what you wanted.”
“I was wrong.” He hated being wrong. It put him on the defensive, made him doubt himself. Not this time, though. Admitting his mistake was freeing, liberating. “We have to include it in the book.”
Otto shook his head. “We can't. No good would come of it. It all happened so long ago there's no reason to shout it from the rooftops now. And you know what it could do to my chances for the nomination.”
“Screw your nomination.”
Otto's eyebrows winged higher. “Excuse me?”
“If the party can't see you are a separate entity from our mother, that what she did has nothing to do with you, then screw them. Natalie's right. We have to let it come out. It's the truth, and the truth needs to be shared.”
“I suppose there's no way to stop her from releasing the information on her own. We should have put a non-disclosure clause in the contract. I never dreamed we'd need it, though.”
“She wouldn't do that.” He was as certain of that as he'd been of anything in his life. “She's not a tabloid journalist. She wouldn't take what she knows and sell it to someone else. But she also won't put her name to a project that hides the truth. She has too much integrity, too much respect for herself and her professional reputation.”
“So if we refuse to use her manuscript, refuse to pay her, she'll just walk away? Let someone else do the biography, someone who will accept our demands?”
“Yes.”
Otto drained his glass and slapped it down with a flourish. “Here's what I propose. We pay her the half she has owing for the draft, but we make her sign a new contract that includes an NDA and the right to give her draft to another writer. We can edit out the scandalous bits ourselves before sending it along. Her name would not be associated with the book and we don't lose as much time as we would if we had to start from scratch. I'm willing to cough up the nine grand to keep us on track.
“What do you say?”
––––––––
THE APARTMENT SMELLED strongly of fresh paint and floor glue. Natalie dropped the last load of what she'd retrieved from Rafe's in the echoingly empty bedroom and wandered back to the living area. She couldn't help comparing the small space to the airy elegance of his home, which was pointless. She'd only ever been a temporary resident there, shouldn't have let herself grow accustomed to it. Or to its owner.
The busyness of buying replacement food, furniture, and fixtures had kept her from obsessing over Otto's reaction—or lack thereof—to the biography. He had made no comment when she'd told him about Eugenia's corrupt activities, simply instructed her to send the document immediately so he could review it. Other than a terse thank you email including a generic promise to be in touch, she'd heard nothing since, and that had been two days ago.
He hadn't paid her yet, either.
Her phone rang with the chime indicating someone was requesting access at the apartment building's front door. Her new furniture wasn't being delivered until the next day, and the Silverberries weren't expected until Saturday for a casual housewarming party. Not that they were calling it a housewarming—Helen having pointed out it might be too on the nose for celebrating the return to a home that had been damaged by fire.
She connected the call. “Hello?”
“It's me,” Shyla said. “Can I come up?”
She blinked in shock. Though she desperately wanted to know if Rafe had stuck with his promise to support Shyla, she hadn't been able to bring herself to message either of them. She might have lost what little control she had over her emotions if he had ignored her texts, and it had felt too intrusive to call Shyla directly. She'd done enough to jeopardize her sister's recovery by alienating Rafe. Putting her back up by asking if she was staying sober wouldn't help at all.
“Natalie? Can I come in?”
“Of course. Sorry. Still getting used to this app.” The lie came far too easily off her tongue. She unlocked the building entrance, opened her private door, and stuck her head out in the hall. Moments later, Shyla appeared, walking sure and steady, head high.
Oh, thank God. Natalie's eyes brimmed with tears. “You look so good.” Too impatient to wait, she let the door swing shut and hustled down the hall. “You look great.”
She wanted to wrap her in a tight hug, but Shyla had rejected such advances in the past. So it was doubly welcome when her sister gave her a quick, shy, unprompted embrace.
“Thanks. I hope it's okay I came by.” She tucked several strands of brunette hair behind her ear. It hung past her shoulders, the ends uneven and thin, but gleamed shiny and clean in the hallway lights.
“Of course it is. You can stop by anytime.” She opened the apartment door. “There's nowhere to sit yet, except the floor. My furniture doesn't get delivered until tomorrow.”
“That's fine.” Shyla shoved her hands into her pockets and went through the small hall to the living area. The sliding glass doors looked south and the setting sun was hidden by clouds heavy with impending snow. With no lamps or ceiling fixture, the room was dim and gloomy, despite its new coat of paint.
“You really do look great.” Natalie couldn't help repeating herself. Shyla's skin, while still ravaged around the eyes and mouth by years of drug and alcohol use, no longer had a greasy, oily, neglected look. “How have things been?” She didn't dare ask anything more pointed, no matter how much she wanted to know about Rafe.
Shyla's answer rang with honesty. “Fucking hard. But I'm hanging in there.”
“Good for you.” What else was there to say? Topics for small talk were few and far between. In the past, any mention of her own career or friends or future plans had resulted in accusations of flaunting her good fortune. As for well-intended questions meant to draw Shyla out...her sister tended to consider them in the same light as the Spanish Inquisition.
The silence between them was about to reach awkward heights when Shyla blurted out, “Rafe misses you.”
Natalie's heart pumped hard once, stopped for a breath, and then began again in a rapid rhythm that made her lightheaded. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think? I saw him yesterday and today. He looks like a truck ran over him. Twice. When I asked what was wrong, he told me you moved out.”
There were many surprising things about all that, not least of which was the fact that Shyla had even noticed Rafe's appearance. She rarely tuned in to other people's emotional states. Natalie, however, couldn't let the first statement go. “He said he missed me?”
Shyla pushed her fists deeper into the pockets of her jeans. She noticed, as if from a great distance, that though they were worn and faded, they were clean. “Not in so many words. But he's a wreck.”
“Don't take this the wrong way, but it’s not as if you've known him long. How can you tell?”
“He just handed over the money. Didn't ask me any of the usual questions. Like he didn't really care anymore.”
She squeezed her eyelids tight for a moment, swamped by relief that Rafe hadn't abandoned Shyla despite her betrayal. “He's still holding up his end of the bargain.”
“Yeah. Why wouldn't he?”
If Shyla hadn’t realized that the dissolution of Natalie and Rafe’s relationship might endanger her recovery, there was no need to spell it out. “Never mind. If he had asked his usual questions, would he have liked the answers?”
Shyla lifted her chin, defiant and proud. “Yes. I'm clean. I know it's barely been a week, but I’m going to do it this time.”
“What about White Spruce? Do you still want to go to the rehab program there?”
She nodded vigorously. “I do. I have to. I'm tempted all the time, even at the shelter. I need to get right away from that life, make a true break.”
“Is there still space for you?”
“Yes.” The look she slid Natalie was shamefaced but not sly. “Mom and Dad put up the deposit. I had them send the money right to the clinic. I should have let you do that in the first place.”
The tiny ember of hope that had been flickering faintly for the last week grew a little stronger. Maybe this truly would be the time Shyla made it. “What about the rest?”
Her mouth pressed together. “I didn't ask them for it. They think the two thousand is all that's needed. There's a counsellor at the shelter that says there might be other ways to get the rest, funding and grants and stuff.”
Natalie had never heard of such opportunities and hoped this counsellor could be trusted.
Because she was very much afraid the Talbots weren't going to allow her to finish their mother's biography.
Goodbye, eighteen thousand dollars.