Chapter 5: The Buyout

The story ran at six the next morning.

Odessa read it aloud at the kitchen table in the voice she used for obituaries.

"'Sources close to the family say Calla Wray, who claims to be the reclusive genius Calla Hartsfield, was treated as a child for delusions.'"

She set the tablet down.

"Delusions," she said. "I had a cousin with delusions. He thought he was a duck. He was nicer than these people."

I sat with my coffee going cold and my hands flat on the table.

Six weeks of therapy at eleven, the week after the funeral.

A psychologist's office with a rug and a tray of crayons.

Only my grandfather and one trustee had known.

And my husband, because I had told him once at three in the morning, in the dark.

"He won't stop," I said.

"No," Jarrett said, from the doorway. He had a shirt in one hand and no breakfast. "He won't."

"Then I go to him."

"Where?"

"His building. In person."

Jarrett looked at me for a long moment.

"I'll drive," he said.

Aldridge Labs stood on Congress Avenue in sixteen floors of glass.

The lobby ran two stories high, with a living wall of moss behind the front desk.

At nine in the morning it was full.

Four hundred employees moved through it with badges and coffees, and a hundred of them turned when the revolving door spat me out.

I walked to the middle of the floor and stopped under the moss.

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