Chapter 111: The Call She Didn't Expect

Chapter 111: The Call She Didn't Expect
Amelia's POV

The book had been out for three weeks and life had settled into something that felt genuinely, sustainably good, which was new enough that I still noticed it, the way you notice the absence of a sound that had been there so long you'd stopped hearing it.

I was in the garden on a Tuesday afternoon with Clara in my lap and Sarah attempting to walk along the edge of the garden bench for the fourth time that day with the focused determination of someone who has decided this is happening today regardless of what gravity has to say about it, and my phone rang with a number I didn't recognise and I answered it the way I always did now, without the old spike of anxiety, because we'd come out the other side of the time when unknown numbers meant something was wrong.

"Is this Amelia Hayes," the voice said, a man, mid-thirties maybe, professional but with something careful underneath it.

"Yes," I said.

"My name is Joel Reeves," he said. "I'm a journalist with The Post. I've been investigating Hayes International for about six months and I wanted to give you the opportunity to comment before we publish tomorrow."

Something tightened in my chest but I kept my voice even and said "comment on what."

"A safety report from six years ago," he said, "relating to a structural issue at the Hayes Grand in Chicago. The report was suppressed internally before it could be filed with the relevant authorities. Six weeks after it was suppressed a guest named Marcus Webb fell from a fourth-floor balcony due to a faulty railing. He died. Hayes International settled with the family privately and quietly and the report was never made public." He paused. "We have the original report and we have internal communications showing it was signed off to be buried by the then-newly-appointed CEO."

I was standing now without having decided to stand, Clara on my hip, Sarah still working the bench behind me.

"Who signed off on it," I said, even though I already felt the answer coming.

"Grayson Hayes," he said. "We're publishing tomorrow at six AM. I wanted you to have the chance to respond."

I said I needed to call him back and he gave me his number and I hung up and stood in the garden in the October afternoon and didn't move for a moment, just stood there with Clara looking at my face like she could feel that something had changed.

I went inside and put Clara in the playpen and went to the kitchen table and sat down and opened my laptop and searched the name Marcus Webb and Hayes Grand Chicago and found it immediately, a small piece from six years ago, a death reported as an accident at a luxury hotel, a quiet settlement, a family that had gone mostly silent afterward except for a few forum posts that read like someone trying to be heard and running out of places to try.

I read everything available and it didn't take long because there wasn't much, which was the point, someone had made sure there wasn't much, and I sat back and looked at the screen and felt something I hadn't felt in a long time, a kind of exhausted sadness at the realisation that the people we love are capable of things we haven't seen yet.

I heard the front door.

Grayson came through to the kitchen and stopped when he saw my face because he always read my face first and he said "what happened" before he'd even put his bag down, his voice going immediately to that careful flat register that meant he was ready for something.

I turned the laptop toward him.

He looked at the screen and something moved through his face that I watched carefully because I needed to see it, needed to know what was there before he managed it, and what I saw was not surprise.

It was recognition.

He knew.

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat down and for a moment neither of us said anything and the kitchen was completely quiet except for the girls in the next room.

"A journalist called me," I said. "His name is Joel Reeves. He's publishing tomorrow morning."

Grayson looked at the table.

"Tell me," I said, and I kept my voice steady because this wasn't the time for anything else.

He looked up and his eyes were direct and tired and he said "I was twenty-eight and three months into running the company and someone put a report in front of me and told me it was a liability issue that would cost us a quarter and our contracts with two major hotel groups if it became public during the review period and I signed where they told me to sign without reading it properly." He paused. "By the time I read it fully the report had been filed as resolved internally and two months later a man was dead and a settlement had been paid and I have spent six years knowing that I have to answer for that at some point."

He said it all in one breath, direct and without decoration, the way he said things when he was past the point of managing how they landed.

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Did you know what was in it," I said. "When you signed."

And Grayson, who never hesitated, who always had the answer before anyone had finished the question, was silent for a beat too long.