Chapter 12: Carla's Confession

The Hartwell was a hotel with a doorman and a lobby that smelled of lilies.

Clive walked me to the elevator and stopped.

"I'll be in the bar," he said. "I'll have a club soda and look like a guy waiting for his brother."

"You don't have a brother."

"Then I'll look worse at it."

I laughed once, a short breath.

"Nine o'clock," I said. "If I'm not down by ten, you can come get me."

"I'll come at nine fifteen."

The suite was on the nineteenth floor.

Carla opened the door herself in a gray cardigan, with her hoops out and her makeup gone.

She looked ten years older than she had in the restaurant.

Her husband stood at the window with his back to the room and his hands behind him.

He did not turn when I came in.

"Mr. Santoro won't speak to you," Carla said. "It's not rudeness. He's ashamed."

"Where is Gianna?"

"At Maureen's. Brendan took her there. She's lying down."

She sat on the couch and gestured at the chair across from her.

I stayed standing.

"You said you knew more about your granddaughter than anyone alive."

"I did." She pressed her fingers to her mouth, then lowered them. "I'll tell it once, and you won't like me when I'm finished."

"I don't like you now."

"Good," Carla said quietly. "That will make it easier."

She told it to the carpet.

Gianna and Brendan had broken up in their last year of college.

He had been kind and he had been leaving, and Gianna had not been able to bear it.

The first time, she took a handful of her sleeping pills and then called her mother.

The second time, she called Brendan.

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