CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Adrian did not sleep that night.

She was aware of it because a penthouse had a distinctive atmosphere at two in the morning that she was very familiar with a specific presence of a person, the way a place felt differently when someone in it was awake and thinking versus asleep and absent. She was in the kitchen at half past two for water and he was on the island with his laptop and four printed documents and the quiet, compressed stillness of a man who has been working through something complicated for a long time and has not yet finished.

He glanced at her as she took a step in. Then he glanced down at the papers. "The Hong Kong subsidiary, " he said. "There is a paper trail that Anderson would have found useful. Roman had the access code to the study safe I changed it three weeks ago for unrelated reasons, which is lucky, because the most recent documents are in there. What he has had access to is enough to cause problems but not enough to cause the specific problem Anderson wanted. The board meeting is in twelve days. Whatever Roman was planning to do, it required the most recent quarterly figures."

"Which he does not have."

"Which he does not have." He looked at her. He had the expression of a man who has run the calculation and found a number he did not want to find. "This has been planned for a long time. Not opportunistically. The timing, the access, the specific documents it was all designed to lead to a particular result at a particular moment."

"Anderson has been very patient, " she said.

"Very"

She took her water. She sat across from him. "Are you going to be okay?"

He looked at her. The question seemed to throw him a bit not the question itself but the fact that he was asked directly about his feelings, as if it was still a bit surprising to him.

"Roman is my brother, " he explained. "Actually I am aware that what is happening tonight with these documents is the same thing I told you was happening in the car. I am emotionally processing two different things at the same time and they are muddling each other."

"The professional issue and the personal one, " she said.

"Exactly."

"And which one is more difficult?"

There was no answer from him straight away. And she liked that he did not rush his response the question was important enough to him that he considered it before he spoke.

"The personal one, " he eventually said. "Because I wanted him to be the person I remembered. I was wishing for the brother who survived and came back to be the same brother I knew, but he isn't, and I have to figure out what that means for me. What he is now. What he has been turned into and how much of that is his doing versus what was done to him." He stopped for a moment. "I can't be furious at someone for surviving badly. I have some understanding of surviving badly."

From across the island, she was looking at him. The lamp, the documents, the city outside, which was doing its three in the morning thing.

"You can be angry and understand it at the same time, " she told him. "It's not impossible for things to be angry and understand it." "No, " he replied. "I guess not."

"Besides, whatever he has done whatever Anderson turned him into doesn't affect the fact of the boy who was in the fire nine years ago. That boy existed. Your memory of him is just as real." He did not say anything for a bit. "Yes, " he agreed.

Next day he challenged Roman. Aria was busy in the studio room and hence did not hear anything. The penthouse's walls were excellent soundproofing. She kept working on the collection. She thought about her mother and waited.

At five o'clock, he entered the studio. "He is gone, " he informed her. "Security is escorting him. He gave a full statement to the police names dates the chain of communication between himself and Anderson going back eighteen months. He decided to cooperate, a decision that I did not expect, but in his interest to do, and it will make things difficult for Anderson's defense."

"What about Roman?" For a moment Adrian was quiet. "He said that Anderson told him that I had rejected his brother in the fire; that I had known he was alive, and yet I had chosen not to look for him; that I was the reason the family had left them their mother, the circumstances that led to the fire. Everything he said was a version of the events that made me the cause."

"None of which was true."

However, he was only nine when Anderson picked him up. Nine years old, just barely escaping death and nobody around to tell him a different story. If you happen to be the only story that a child has, then that is what the child becomes.

She paused that thought a little bit.

"He really is your brother, " she stated.

"He is my brother who planned the brake failure which almost killed you and our child, " Adrian retorted. He was devoid of any emotion and totally in control. "Those two things exist simultaneously. I am still figuring out how to handle that coexistence."

"You are not expected to figure it out today."

"No." He was looking at the jacket on the dress form. He put a lot of thought into it. Then: "He said something to me before he left. He said he was sorry. I am still undecided whether I believe him. But he said it."

She observed him.

"Come and have dinner, " she offered. "I am making the chicken."

He gave her a look.

"Marianna's?"

"That's my mother. I resort to it on the roughest of days."

He fell silent for a moment.

"Yeah, " he declared. "Fine."

She went into the kitchen and started to cook the chicken and after some time she heard him shut the studio door and go to his desk. Then after about an hour she heard him entering the kitchen and sitting down at the island. She did not look up because she figured that he needed to come to terms with his feelings in his own time and on his own terms.

By the time the chicken was ready the fragrance from it had spread throughout their flat the preserved lemon and the garlic and the cozy sense of something lovingly prepared and they shared it at the kitchen island with their fingers, the way it was intended to be eaten, and for a moment neither of them needed to say a thing.