He Sent His Helicopter for Her Dog, So I Signed the Papers novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Urn on the Table

Hayes reaches the penthouse and sees her bandaged hands, and Lena sets her grandmother's urn on the table and asks him to take it to Napa. Then Camille calls and mentions the burn unit's intake form, which no one should have.

Hayes came through the penthouse door with his bow tie hanging open and his phone still lit in his hand.

He stopped when he saw the bag at my feet.

"Where do you think you're going?" he said.

"Out."

"Lena, it's one comment on a photo. You don't leave your husband over a comment."

"I already signed the papers."

"Those were a mood." He crossed the room fast.

Then he saw my hands.

Both of them were wrapped to the wrist in white gauze, and the left one had a rust-colored stain across the palm.

He slowed down and stopped an arm's length from me.

"What happened to your hands?"

"The fire road happened."

"What fire road? Camille said the ranch was evacuated. She said you went to a hotel."

"Camille says a lot of things."

I walked to the shelf by the entry and lifted down the urn.

It was small and plain and dark green, and my bandaged fingers could barely close around it.

I carried it to the dining table and set it down in front of him.

He looked at it for a long moment.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Nonna."

He did not move.

"She died on the fourteenth," I said. "At 4:17 in the morning."

"No."

"I held her until she stopped."

He took a step toward me and reached for my wrists.

I pulled both hands behind my back.

"Don't," I said. "They still split open when anyone grabs them."

"Then let me take you to a hospital. My driver is downstairs."

"I've lived in a hospital for eleven days."

"Eleven days." He said it back to me slowly. "Nobody told me that either."

"I told your ops line," I said. "Thirty-eight times."

His face went gray under the penthouse lights.

He reached out one hand toward the urn and pulled it back before he touched it.

"I would have come," he said. "Lena, I would have come. If anyone had told me."

"You were at your launch."

"I didn't know."

"You didn't ask."

He pushed both hands through his hair.

"Camille told me the line had been quiet. She said you'd stopped calling. I thought you were angry about something small."

"I stopped calling because she told me your phone was off, and then Nonna was dead."

"That's not what happened. That can't be what happened."

"Did you send Guardian One to Malibu at four in the morning?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

"There was a priority extraction request," he said slowly. "I signed it from the stage. Camille put the tablet in my hand."

"For what?"

"A family friend and her dog."

"A dog."

"Duchess was trapped in a house on Latigo, and the fire was coming down the ridge." He heard it as he said it. "I didn't ask who else was in the zone."

"No," I said. "You never ask."

"That's not fair."

"Last spring you signed a ten-million-dollar contract in the back of a car without reading page two. You told me so at dinner. You were proud of it."

"This is not a contract."

"No. This is my grandmother."

He looked down at the urn again and swallowed.

"I trusted my people," he said. "That is the whole point of having them."

"Then your people killed her, and you handed them the pen."

He stood there with nothing to say, and for once I did not fill the quiet for him.

I picked up the bag.

"The jet you booked for the thirtieth," I said. "It's her birthday. Take her to Napa. Let her see the vineyards."

"Lena, stop. Please. Let me call someone."

"Who?"

"A doctor. A lawyer. My father's people. Anyone. Let me fix it."

"You can't fix ash."

"Then let me be there." His voice cracked on the last word. "Let me stand next to you."

"Eleven days ago I needed you on that road."

He flinched.

It was not enough.

I turned for the door, and his phone rang between us on the table.

The screen read Camille.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

"Answer it," I said. "Put it on speaker."

"Lena."

"Answer it, Hayes."

He touched the screen with a thumb that was not steady.

"Hayes?" Camille's voice came through the room, smooth and warm and a little breathless. "Are you home? Tell me you found her. I've been so worried."

"Camille," he said. "Where was Guardian One at 4:09 on the fourteenth?"

There was a pause so short I almost missed it.

"Hayes, honey, it's late. We can go through the logs in the morning."

"Now."

"Hayes," she said, and her voice dropped, sweet and gentle. "You're upset. Don't let her record you. Her hands aren't half as bad as she's telling you."

I stood very still.

"I have the intake form from the burn unit," Camille said. "I read it myself."

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