Two A.M. Line

"Did you ever hear what he said to me?"

The kitchen phone rang at two on Monday morning. Nobody calls the landline, which is how I knew it was him. I let it ring four times, then picked up.

"Who said what?" I asked.

"Your father. At the rehearsal dinner." Trevor's voice was low and tired, with a clink of ice behind it. "You were across the room, laughing with your cousins. He walked me out to the terrace. He said, Don't mistake the tide for the ocean, son. Then he went back inside and cut his steak."

I sat down at the island. My mother's cradle lay on the counter where I had set it, its mesh catching the range light.

"He was giving you advice."

"He was giving me a leash." A short laugh. "Ten years, Tess. Every director calls me Silas's boy. The deckhands paint HALLORANE over the funnel when they think I'm not looking, and I look, every time. I have raised revenue by four hundred percent and I am still the man who married the owner's daughter."

"Nobody owns you."

"You could end me with one word to Lionel. You never would. That's what makes it unbearable."

He did not know how close he was standing to the truth, and I did not tell him.

I could have asked about Thursday. I could have said, I heard you dictate the whole thing to a phone. Instead I said, "Where are you?"

"Boston. Neil's hosting the lenders." A pause. "I sent your phone home with his driver. It's on the hall table."

"Thank you."

"Tess." His voice cracked and steadied. "I know you think I've become someone else."

"Haven't you?"

"I've become someone who can't be dismissed." He drank. I heard the ice shift. "Come to the Harbor Room at ten and watch. Wear the gray coat. For once you'll see me as the room does."

"And how is that?"

"As the man who owns it." I could hear him smile. "In a few hours I finally find out what I'm worth."

He hung up.

I sat with the receiver against my chest until the dial tone became a whine. Then I put it down and went to the junk drawer.

At three, I called Miriam back. By four, her IT man had come to the house in a rain slicker and copied the file from the tablet with every scrap of its metadata. Sent Thursday, 11:40 p.m. From Trevor's number. To the number I had half recognized on Thursday, which Miriam's man confirmed was Kaylee's second phone.

The tablet went into a sealed evidence bag. The file went onto my phone and onto a drive Miriam locked in her office safe.

I hadn't slept, and I wouldn't. I put on the gray coat at six.