Chapter 13 - The Father I Had Been
Genevieve stayed overnight for observation.
No new bleeding.
No surgery.
A severe post-concussion episode triggered by overwork.
The doctor ordered rest.
Genevieve argued.
The doctor won.
I sat beside her after Toby fell asleep at Sarah's.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Depends."
"When did you stop trusting me?"
She looked at the ceiling.
"Before Evelyn."
That hurt.
"When?"
"When you started using money instead of apologies."
I said nothing.
She continued.
"After you left Mom, you offered to pay off my mortgage."
"I thought it would help."
"I know."
"It didn't."
"No."
She turned toward me.
"You kept trying to make practical things easier because you didn't want to sit in the emotional part."
She was right.
I had offered Toby a college account before I had asked Genevieve whether she was sleeping after her husband's death.
I had sent Marianne a favorable property settlement and told myself generosity was accountability.
I had purchased art because collecting made taste feel like character.
Money was useful.
I had let it become my most fluent language.
"I'm sorry."
Genevieve closed her eyes.
"Better."
"That's it?"
"What do you want, a ribbon?"
I laughed.
The next morning Marianne visited.
She and I sat in the cafeteria while Genevieve slept.
"You look old," she said.
"I'm sixty-eight."
"You looked younger when you were behaving worse."
"Cruel."
"Accurate."
There had been a time when we could speak like this before resentment swallowed everything.
I asked whether she blamed herself for missing Evelyn's scheme.
"No."
The answer came instantly.
I envied it.
"Why not?"
"Because she wasn't my responsibility. You were. And I divorced you."
Fair.
Then Marianne softened.
"Thomas, accountability is not spending the rest of your life proving you are the stupidest man in Chicago."
"Top five?"
"Competitive field."
I smiled.
She continued.
"Do the work. Then stop making your humiliation the center of Genevieve's recovery."
That sentence changed how I behaved.
I stopped calling Genevieve every morning for updates unless she asked.
I stopped sending drivers without permission.
I stopped trying to attend every appointment.
I asked.
Sometimes she said no.
Nothing terrible happened.
At work, the independent art review published its first interim report.
Of 1,146 objects in the Vance Heritage collection, thirty-one required enhanced provenance research.
Nine were directly tied to Evelyn or Sebastian.
Four were likely stolen.
Two had already been recovered for rightful owners.
Hundreds were completely fine.
The company was not secretly built on art crime.
It had a serious, contained failure.
Specificity mattered.
Then the report identified one more person who had helped Evelyn.
Not Martin.
Not Sebastian.
A museum curator named Dr. Alice Kerr.
Genevieve knew her.
She had been Genevieve's mentor for eleven years.
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