The Years Between Them

At the hospital, Vincent bought a cup of coffee and left it untouched until it went cold.

Elena lay beneath two blankets with a splint around her ankle. A police officer waited outside. After the first examination, she had asked for the door to remain open.

Vincent sat where she could see him.

"You can go," she said at last.

"Do you want me to?"

She picked at the blanket's edge.

"I don't know what I want yet."

"Then I'll wait here until you do."

Her mouth moved almost into a smile.

"You used to be terrible at waiting."

"I've had some practice."

He regretted it when her face changed.

"That wasn't an accusation," he said.

"It would be fair if it were."

"You were locked in a room."

"Not every day. Not the whole time. That's what makes it difficult to explain."

He set the coffee aside.

"You don't have to make it easy for me."

Elena stared at the window. Beyond it, rain caught the lights of an ambulance turning into the entrance.

"I was twelve weeks pregnant when I found the first altered payment. You'd been away so much. I wanted to tell you about the baby when we had an evening together. A real evening."

Vincent remembered asking her to move a dinner reservation. Then another. A shipment had gone missing; Daniel had needed signatures; Victoria, who managed outside donors for the foundation, had been calling about an urgent meeting.

He had thought there would be time to apologize properly.

"I asked Daniel about the accounts," Elena continued. "He said you knew. When I said I'd speak to you, he showed me messages. They sounded like you when you were angry. Short. Impatient. He said you were tired of me interfering."

"Why didn't you ask me anyway?"

Her eyes came back to him.

"Because the last time I tried, you told me Daniel understood the accounts better than I did."

Vincent looked at the untouched coffee.

He remembered that too.

"I should have listened."

"Yes," she said quietly. "You should have. But that didn't give them the right to do what they did."

He nodded once.

The warehouse meeting had been Daniel's suggestion. Elena had been told Vincent would meet her there to discuss the papers. Vincent had been told a supplier wanted an urgent private conversation.

Gunfire, a fire in the loading area, two people taken away in separate vehicles. Vincent unconscious. Elena awake enough to hear Daniel telling a medic that her husband had authorized everything.

"When I asked to see you, he said you didn't want me near you. Then he showed me the first order with your signature."

"My signature was on two different payments in that frame. One of them was altered."

She nodded.

"He used the same method on letters. Medical papers. Anything that would keep us apart."

Vincent leaned forward, forearms on his knees.

"Where was Lily born?"

Elena's eyes filled.

"A private clinic. Daniel arranged it. Margaret came afterward. I thought she was the only person who wouldn't let him take my baby somewhere I couldn't find her."

"Did you get to hold her?"

"Yes. For almost a month."

He shut his eyes.

Elena waited until he opened them.

"After that, Margaret kept her at the cottage. Daniel controlled the visits. If I asked too many questions, there wasn't a visit. If I refused to help him find the papers, he told me the cottage might become unsafe."

"You could have told him where they were."

"Then what reason would he have had to keep me alive?"

Vincent had no answer.

"He found the copies I made before the warehouse. He knew I had originals because some pages were missing from his own files. He needed to know there wasn't anything left to use against him. I kept saying there was another copy somewhere. Sometimes it was the only thing I had."

He moved closer, slowly enough that she could follow the movement.

"When you escaped, why didn't you go straight to the police?"

"There was a man outside Margaret's cottage. I saw him photograph Lily through the gate. Daniel sent the picture to the phone I stole. I believed he'd get to her before anyone could help."

Her voice shook.

"I thought if I got the papers first, I could make him let us leave. It sounds stupid now."

"It sounds like you were trying to keep her alive."

Elena looked down at her hands.

"I spent twelve days making plans. Victoria caught me outside the house two nights ago. All that planning, and I still let them take me back."

Vincent wanted to go out into the city and find both of them himself.

He took the blanket instead and drew it over the foot Elena had uncovered while talking.

"You're out now."

She watched his hands.

"Are you going to marry her?"

"No."

"You answered very quickly."

"There isn't anything to think about."

"There was before tonight."

He accepted that because it was true.

"I agreed because it seemed easier than spending the rest of my life explaining why I wanted to be alone. She knew I didn't love her. I thought that made it honest."

Elena closed her eyes.

"I hate that she stood in our house."

"So do I."

He did not ask her to make him feel better about it.

Near dawn, Margaret arrived with Lily wrapped in a coat over her pajamas. Vincent met them outside the room and lowered himself to help undo a stubborn mitten.

"Is Mommy still there?" Lily asked.

"Yes."

"Can I see?"

He stepped aside.

Lily ran until the hospital bed stopped her. Elena leaned down with a cry, and Vincent lifted their daughter the last few inches into her arms.

For a while, he could see only curls, hands, the rabbit crushed between them.

Then Lily looked around.

"You sit here," she told him, patting the space beside her mother's hip.

He looked at Elena.

She moved the blanket to make room.

Vincent sat carefully on the edge. Lily took his hand and put it beneath Elena's.

"Now nobody go anywhere."

He stayed until her eyes closed.