Maybe he’d figured out what she’d done.
The first few days after she’d given those files to that Heather woman, the one who’d approached her in the coffee shop with fifty thousand in cash in her purse, Julie was terrified she’d be found out. She’d tried to be careful, believed she’d covered her tracks. One day while Gold was out for lunch with a friend, she’d found in his desk the key to the storage unit a few blocks away where the clinic stored all the paper files from decades past. She also knew the keypad code to enter the facility — 1825, which just happened to be the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, in meters. That night she went to the storage place, entered the code, then found Gold’s locker. There were no light switches that she could find. Everything was motion sensitive. You walked down a hall, the lights came on. She located Gold’s locker, used the key to open it, and rolled up the door.
The information Heather wanted was most likely to be found in one of the many cardboard business boxes. The time period she was interested in was about a year before the ReproGold Clinic made the transition from paper to computer filing.
The locker was about half filled, and not just with boxes of files. About five years ago Gold had refurbished the office, buying new furniture for the waiting room. Rather than throw out the old stuff, he’d stored it here, probably thinking someday he might be able to sell it.
She found the files pertaining to Miles Cookson and the women who’d been the recipients of his contribution. She gathered them up, stuffed them into her bag, and went home, where she immediately made copies of everything on her home printer. And then she got back in her car and returned the files to their proper places in their proper boxes.
It was as she was leaving the facility the second time that she noticed the security cameras.
Well, of course there would be security cameras. How could she not have thought of this? The storage company had set up cameras in every hallway, at every entry and exit point. So both of her visits were recorded, monitored. Saved.
She returned to the coffee shop the next day, handing over to Heather a thick envelope of the papers she’d photocopied.
“I’m scared,” she’d said, telling her about the cameras.
“Don’t worry,” Heather told her. “As long as Dr. Gold has no idea you did this, there’s no reason for him to ask the storage people for a review of the surveillance video. Most companies keep the video for two weeks to a month. You’ll be okay. I trust you left everything as you found it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one sneaking around behind her boss’s back. But as each day went by and the issue didn’t come up, Julie became more confident that she was going to get away with this.
Julie hid the cash in the back of her bathroom closet, behind the towels and the extra rolls of toilet paper. She got back in touch with the various contractors who’d stopped working on her house when she could no longer pay them. “Can you come back?” she asked. “And is cash okay?”
It was.
But she hadn’t mentioned anything to Dr. Gold about work resuming on her house. She didn’t want to raise any questions about where she’d found the money. She became increasingly confident he did not suspect her, or anyone, of getting into the storage unit.
So something else was bothering him.
Finally, she asked, “Dr. Gold, is everything okay?”
She put the question to him shortly before noon when he announced, without warning, that he was not coming back after lunch, that she would have to cancel the afternoon appointments.
“I’m fine,” he said without conviction. “Just do it.”
Women and their partners trying so hard to start, or enlarge, their families did not respond well to these cancellations. Some of these people, desperate for the clinic’s help, had scheduled their appointments weeks earlier. They’d taken time off from work. Some had driven long distances.
Gold seemed not to care.
If the man didn’t pull himself together, the clinic’s future would be in jeopardy. Julie would have to find herself another job.
She was starting to think she might have to rein in the contractors again. She might need that fifty grand to live on.
Twenty
Providence, RI
Miles had actually spent quite some time in the back of the limo before working up the courage to go into the diner. Going over in his head what he was going to say. He thought back to when he was in high school, the butterflies he had in his stomach while he worked up the courage to ask a girl to the prom. That, in retrospect, was nothing compared to telling a young woman that she was your biological daughter.
It had taken a little more than two hours to make the drive here from New Haven, and he’d spent much of it in quiet contemplation. His frequent driver, Charise, had noticed.
“Hope you’ll forgive the intrusion, Mr. Cookson,” she’d said, “but you seem a little preoccupied today.”
He had told her more times than he could remember to call him Miles, but Charise was a stickler for protocol. When you drove someone around, you wore a white shirt, jacket, and tie, no matter how warm it got outside. You opened the door for your passengers. You addressed them formally. You didn’t take personal calls in your employer’s presence.
“Yeah, a little preoccupied,” he’d said.
“Would you like the radio on?” Her finger had been ready to bring in the Sirius station of his choice. “Beatles?”
“No, that’s okay,” he’d said. “I’m happy with quiet.”
He had not necessarily meant that she, personally, should zip her lip, but she had almost nothing to say for the rest of the trip.
As per Dorian’s suggestion, Miles was beginning this process with Chloe Swanson. Much was riding on the encounter. If it went well, he’d feel encouraged about getting in touch with the others. If it went badly, well, he might have to rethink everything.
He had settled on a go-slow approach. Head into the Paradise Diner, find a place to sit away from other patrons, order a cup of coffee, hope Chloe Swanson would wait on him, and if she did, engage her in conversation. Get a feel for her before asking if he might speak to her privately.
Heather had found out for him that Chloe would be working the morning shift. She’d called the diner, pretending to be someone who’d lost a credit card. Chloe had been her waitress, Heather said, and maybe she’d found it? Come by in the morning, she was told. Chloe was covering someone else’s shift.
And so here he was.
Miles was going to meet his biological daughter.
He took a deep breath, got out of the car, walked into the diner, and right into a nasty situation between Chloe and some asshole customer.
It was at that moment a hint of the Huntington’s made its presence known. A sudden flash of irritation, anger. He grabbed the ketchup from the next booth over and shot it all over the guy’s face. Like throwing water on a dog in heat.
And then he’d just come out with it.
My name is Miles and I think I’m your dad.
God, talk about smooth.
The look on her face. Stunned, dumbfounded, gobsmacked. Just stood there, staring at him for several seconds before finally saying, “What?”
There was no way to ease into it at that point. The proverbial cat was out of the bag.
He said, “That didn’t come out the way I’d planned. I—”
“Jesus,” she said, now looking at the table, which was covered with rivulets of ketchup that crisscrossed the pancake order. “What a fucking mess.”