CHAPTER 17 - THE LAST CONVERSATION
CHAPTER 17 - THE LAST CONVERSATION
I visited Victor two days later.
Not as his wife.
Not as his enemy.
As the person who needed to close the final door.
He lay in a private hospital room under police guard.
His shoulder was bandaged.
His face looked pale and smaller than I remembered.
Without the tailored suits, the penthouse, and the expensive watch, he appeared ordinary.
Perhaps he always had been.
“I heard your speech,” he said.
“It was everywhere.”
“Yes.”
“You admitted the experiment was wrong.”
“It was.”
He looked toward the window.
“I thought you would defend it.”
“So did I.”
“Your father resigned.”
“Yes.”
“And you are breaking up the company.”
“Restructuring it.”
“You sound like him.”
“I hope I also sound like my mother.”
Victor nodded.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then he asked the question he had been carrying.
“Did you ever love me?”
“Yes.”
“Even after you started seeing who I was?”
“I kept loving who I hoped you would become.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“That is worse.”
“It was worse for both of us.”
He looked at his uninjured hand.
“Camille told me you would never respect me if you knew I needed your family.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I already believed it before she said it.”
He laughed weakly.
“I spent years resenting you for being dependent.”
“All while I was afraid of being valued only for what I owned.”
“We were both lying.”
“Yes.”
“But only one of us used those lies as permission to become cruel.”
He closed his eyes.
“I know.”
I removed the divorce papers from my bag.
His attorney had already reviewed them.
I was not seeking the penthouse, money, or public damages.
I asked only for the return of personal property and a legal end to the marriage.
Victor opened his eyes.
“You could destroy me.”
“I could.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because the law will decide what you owe for the company crimes.”
“The court will decide what you owe for the assault.”
“I do not need revenge to prove I have power.”
He stared at the papers.
“Will you ever forgive me?”
“Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
He signed.
His hand shook on the final page.
When he finished, he reached beneath the blanket and removed a folded piece of paper.
“I found this in Camille’s bag before she left the penthouse.”
It was a photocopy of a hospital medication chart from the day my mother died.
One dosage had been altered by hand.
A sedative had been increased to a level that could have stopped her breathing.
The approving initials belonged to a nurse named L.R.
“Who is L.R.?” I asked.
“Camille said the nurse disappeared after your mother died.”
“Did she give you a name?”
“Lydia Ross.”
I knew the name.
Lydia Ross had worked at Hartwell House for six years.
She was the woman who helped my father dress my mother for burial.
She had vanished the following spring.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Victor gave a sad smile.
“Because until two nights ago, I still thought information was something you traded.”
“And now?”
“Now I understand some things have to be given because they are true.”
I folded the chart.
Victor looked at me.
“Olivia.”
I stopped near the door.
“When Daniel shot me, I thought about the first apartment we rented.”
I remembered it.
One bedroom.
Leaking kitchen faucet.
No view except the brick wall of the next building.
“We were happy there,” he said.
“We were.”
“What happened to us?”
“You decided happiness was evidence you had stopped climbing.”
He looked away.
I opened the door.
Behind me, he whispered.
“I am sorry.”
May you like
This time, I believed him.
It did not change my decision.
