Chapter 54 Before it starts

Chapter 54 Before it starts
I read the message twice and put the phone face down on the nightstand.  
Bruno said, without moving or opening his eyes, "What does it say."  
"How did you know?" I said.  
"Your breathing changed," he said.  
I turned toward him and he opened his eyes and looked at me in the dark room and I held the phone toward him and he read it and his jaw moved once before he handed it back.  
"He wants to offer you something," Bruno said.  
"Money," I said. "Or a deal that keeps him out of the courtroom."  
"He thinks everyone has a number they will accept," Bruno said.  
I lay back and looked at the ceiling.  
"What do you want to do?" Bruno said.  
"I want to go to Lisbon," I said.  
"After that," he said.  
"I am going to meet him," I said. "Not because he has anything I want. Because I want to look at him across a table one more time and tell him I am testifying and there is nothing he can offer that changes that." I turned and looked at Bruno. "And then I want to get on a plane to Lisbon and not think about him again until the trial."  
"When?" Bruno said.  
"After Lisbon," I said. "He can wait ten days."  
Bruno took the phone from my hand and set it on his nightstand and sat beside me.  
"Sleep," he said.  
"You are very bossy about sleep," I said.  
"And food," he said. "You know this about me."  
I closed my eyes.  
We were at the airport by five forty.  
Bruno moved through it without urgency and without wasting time. He had two bags, both carry-on, and he carried mine without asking and I let him because it was not about needing it done, it was about him wanting to do it, and those were different things.  
We got coffee from a cart near the gate and sat side by side with our legs close and the sky outside the terminal windows going from black to deep blue.  
"Tell me what you want to do first," Bruno said.  
"Find the studio," I said.  
"You haven't seen it yet," he said.  
"I know," I said. "Thank you anyway."  
He spoke quietly close to me and I closed my eyes and the plane lifted and the city fell away below us and I let it go, all of it, the apartment and Richard and Harlan and Reeves and Rosa and the documents and the courtrooms and all of it, and held onto the steady presence beside me and the fact that in two and a half hours there would be bread still warm from an oven and a studio with paint on the walls and a north-facing window because the light mattered.  
"There is a place near it," he said. "The owner makes bread in the morning and sells it still warm."  
"You went to Lisbon to look at studios," I said.  
"I went for a meeting," he said. "I looked at studios while I was there."  
"How many meetings did you actually attend?"  
He considered this.  
"Two," he said. "Out of four."  
I shook my head and his hand rested near mine on the seat without making anything of it.  
We boarded and Bruno put both bags in the overhead and sat beside me and the engines started and Lisbon was two and a half hours away and the sun came up outside the window.  
I leaned my head against his shoulder.  
His hand rested near mine on the armrest.  
"Thank you for the studio," I said.  
"You haven't seen it yet," he said.  
"I know," I said. "Thank you anyway."  
He spoke again, low and steady, and I closed my eyes and the plane lifted and I let everything go, the apartment, Richard, Harlan, Reeves, Rosa, the documents, all of it, and held onto his steady presence beside me.  
We landed at eight forty.  
The city was warm and white and loud with morning.  
The taxi stopped on a narrow street with a café on one corner and a blue tiled building on the other and the studio above a bookshop with its door propped open.  
Bruno paid and we stood on the street with our bags and the morning sun on our faces.  
"Well?" he said.  
"Perfect," I said.  
He took my bag and we went up the stairs.  
The studio was exactly what he had described. North-facing window, paint on the walls in three colours from whoever had been there before, an easel someone had left behind, light moving across the floor even though it was barely nine.  
I stood in the middle of it and turned around once.  
Bruno stood in the doorway with both bags and watched me.  
"You knew," I said.  
"I told you the light mattered," he said.  
I walked across the room and stood close to him and the studio was warm and the city was outside the window and none of the last month had gone anywhere but it was behind us now and everything in front of us was open and ours.  
His phone rang in his jacket.  
We both ignored it.  
It rang again.  
He moved back and looked at the screen.  
"Richard's lawyer," he said.  
I took the phone from his hand and answered it.  
"Ms. Lambert," the lawyer said. "I apologise for the timing. But Mr. Simpson has asked me to tell you something that cannot wait ten days."  
"Tell me," I said.  
"He is willing to plead guilty," the lawyer said. "Full admission. Every charge. No trial. But his condition is that you hear his reason directly. From him."  
I looked at Bruno.  
"His reason for what?" I said.  
"For all of it," the lawyer said. "He says you deserve to hear why. And that if you hear it, you will understand something about a death that nobody else has told you."  
"Whose death?" I said.  
"Not his father," the lawyer said. "Yours."  
The studio went very quiet.  
Bruno stopped moving and stood a few steps away.  
I kept the phone against my ear and did not move.  
Bruno was watching my face and whatever he saw there made him cross the studio in three steps and stop near me.  
"What about my father?" I said.  
"Mr. Simpson says he will only discuss it in person," the lawyer said. "He understands the request is significant. He is prepared to sign the guilty plea before you arrive. Before you say a single word to him. You will walk in with his signed admission in your hand and walk out with it regardless of how the conversation goes."  
"He wants something," I said. "Nobody signs a guilty plea out of generosity."  
"He wants you to understand," the lawyer said. "That is what he told me to tell you."  
"Understand what specifically?" I said.  
"He said you would know when he told you," the lawyer said. "I am sorry. That is all I have."  
I ended the call.  
Bruno took the phone from my hand and set it on the wooden table and stood a few steps away and waited. He did not fill the silence. He did not ask the obvious questions. He just stood there and let me have the moment and that was exactly what I needed.