Dominic's POV
Augustus delivers the folder himself, on Friday, at four o'clock, in a hush.
It's a plain brown file with a rubber band round it. He lays it on my desk like a man laying a wreath. His hands are shaking. He doesn't say a word about the weir, or Windward, or the things that were said on a causeway at dawn.
"Read it," he says. "Or don't. I wouldn't blame you."
"Augustus..."
"I'm sorry, my boy." He kisses my forehead. It's the first time he has done it since I was twelve. "I'm so very sorry."
He goes.
The folder lies there.
I don't touch it for six hours.
***
At ten, Vera finds me still staring at it.
The floor is dark. The cleaners have gone. Rain runs down the glass in long, tapering threads, and the city beyond is a smear of gold and red. She comes in without knocking, in her stockinged feet, holding two cups.
She puts one at my elbow.
Cortado. Cinnamon. A pinch of sugar on the rim.
I look at it.
I look at her.
"I'm told," she says, "it's a long night."
"You didn't have to."
"I know."
She sits on the edge of the desk, one foot swinging. There are shadows under her eyes. Her scarf is loose, and I can see the edge of the silver ridge at the side of her neck, and I want, very badly, to put my mouth on it.
I look at the folder instead.
"You haven't opened it."
"No."
"Do you want me to?"
I breathe out.
"Yes."
She slides the rubber band off.
She lifts the cover with the tips of her fingers, as though it were a very old book or a sleeping animal, and spreads the contents on the glass in a neat row. Twelve pages. Photocopies of a ledger, in blue ink. Columns of figures. Dates. Initials. And at the bottom of each, in a bold, slanting hand, a signature.
C. A. Hale.
I know it like I know my own face.
I stand up.
I walk to the window and put my forehead against the cold pane.
"It's his," I say.
"Dominic."
"It's his signature. I'd know it anywhere."
"I know."
"He signed all of them."
"Come here."
"I can't."
"Dominic."
I turn.
She hasn't moved from the desk. She's looking at me with an expression I've never seen on her face. Not pity. Not fear. A kind of fierce, attentive stillness, like a woman at the helm of a ship.
"There's something I want to show you," she says.
"What?"
"Come and look."
I go.
She has taken out a single sheet, the last one, and is holding it between her palms, up to the desk lamp. The light shines through the paper. A faint grey mark emerges: a swirl, a crest, a few letters in a pale curve.
"Look at the watermark."
"I see a watermark."
"It's a Strathmore crest. A particular one, a laid paper, wove finish." Her voice is steady, quick, warm with a familiar enthusiasm I haven't heard in three years. "It's a paper that doesn't exist before 2018. The mill changed its moulds. You see that little nick in the top left of the crest? It's a defect in the roller. They fixed it in 2017."
"This is a photocopy."
"It's a copy of a copy. But the copier's made a ghost of the watermark, because the original was held up to the lamp." She looks up. "Whoever made this took a real signature, a real ledger, and re-created it on new paper. They forged the paper, Dominic. Not just the ink."
"How do you know this?"
She hesitates.
It's a very small pause. A quarter of a second.
"I did a year in paper conservation," she says, "at McGill."
"You told me you did an MBA."
"I did both."
"That's a very odd combination."
"I was a very odd student."
I look at her.
I look at the hands holding up a sheet of paper to a lamp, long and strong and stained faintly blue at the thumbnail. I've seen those hands do that exact thing, in a studio in Camden, at six o'clock in the morning, with a Turner sketch that was supposedly authentic.
Dom, look. Hold it to the light. It's lying.
My eyes sting.
"It's a forgery," I whisper.
"It's a forgery."
"He didn't do it."
"Not like this." She sets the page down, very gently. "Your father may have done something. I don't know. But this isn't it."
I put my hands over my face.
I don't mean to.
It simply happens, like a seam splitting. I hear a sound, low and cracked, and realise it's coming from me. And then there are arms round my shoulders, warm and light, and the smell of rosemary soap and rain, and her forehead pressed to the side of my head.
"I've got you," says Vera.
"I thought..."
"I know."
"I thought he'd..."
"I know. I know. He didn't."
I'm shaking.
She holds me. She holds me as if I were a very large, very old child, and she doesn't say a word. I lean into her. For a moment, I let myself believe that it's my wife.
It isn't a belief.
It's a fact.
It's the plainest thing in the world.
When I can speak, I say: "Thank you."
"Don't."
"Thank you for seeing it."
"It's what I do."
"Is it?"
"I find things people want hidden." Her mouth twists. "It's a curse."
She straightens. She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, and I realise she's been crying, too. We stand there, a foot apart, red-eyed and absurd, in the silent office.
"Dance with me," I say.
"What?"
"I'm sorry. It's stupid."
"There's no music."
"No."
"We're in an office."
"I know."
She stares.
Then, very slowly, the corner of her mouth lifts.
"Hold out your hand, Mr Hale."
I do.
She takes it.
It's the oldest dance in the world. Her palm in mine. My other hand on the small of her back. Her head tilts, just a little, toward my shoulder. The rain, the city, the great glass room, the black gleam of the window, and the two of us turning slowly in the dark with the lamp throwing our shadow across the floor.
She hums.
Just a thread. A breath.
The water is wide.
I don't tell her.
We turn.
At the end of the third turn, she stops. She's standing very close, her face tilted up, her hand against my chest, over the ring.
"Dominic," she says.
"Yes."
"If I told you I wasn't who I said I was."
My heart stops.
I've waited three years and four weeks for this.
I know exactly what I should say. I know. I've always known. It's all right. The words are there, whole and perfect, three syllables from my mouth.
But she's looking at me with such naked, hopeful terror that I understand what she is asking.
She isn't asking if I'd forgive her.
She's asking if I'd still be here.
And she is not ready.
If I say it now, I take away her choice. I tell her the one thing she hasn't decided to say herself. She'd look at me and see a man who knew all along, who watched her lie for twenty-three days, and she'd run so fast and so far that I'd never find her.
So I tell her the truth, instead.
"I'd ask what you wanted to be called."
She makes a small sound.
It's a laugh, and a sob, and something between.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
She closes her eyes.
"And if I said I didn't know?"
"Then I'd wait."
"How long?"
"As long as it took."
"That's a lot to ask of a man."
"I'm not asking," I say. "I'm telling."
She opens her eyes.
They're wet and enormous.
"Ask me tomorrow," whispers Vera.
I lower my forehead to hers.
It's one day.
It's the first time in three years that anyone has given me a day.
"Tomorrow," I say.
I mean it.
I should have known that nothing in my life has ever waited until tomorrow.