Clara read the message over my shoulder. “He wants you alone.”
“I can ask him to meet both of us.”
“Will you?”
I looked at the words on the screen, then at the program folded beside her cup. “I don’t know if he’ll answer you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I wanted to say I’d go because I could handle him. The truth was, I wanted to hear what Martin would say when he couldn’t point to an envelope and call it a family matter.
“I’ll ask,” I said.
Martin agreed to meet us in the small donor office near the museum’s staff entrance. He had taken off his gala jacket, but his tie was still tight at his throat. A framed photograph of the museum’s last expansion stood behind him. In it, he was shaking hands with the director under a banner bearing his family’s name.
Clara sat beside me. Martin glanced at her, then at the chair I’d pulled out for her.
“You said you wanted a written explanation,” he said. “I don’t see why this needs to become a scene.”
“It already became one,” Clara said.
Martin’s mouth tightened. He turned to me. “The offer was a private family misunderstanding. I meant to help Evan make a clean transition out of a relationship that was putting Clara under pressure.”
“What pressure?” I asked.
“Financial pressure. Social pressure. You told me yourself you were struggling.”
“I didn’t tell you that.”
He adjusted a folder on his desk until its edges lined up. “You’ve made your circumstances clear.”
Clara leaned forward. “You told him to leave me before my presentation. Did you pressure me too?”
“I never pressured you.” Martin kept his voice low, like the volume could make the sentence true. “I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
He looked at the framed photograph. I waited for him to answer. He didn’t.
Clara stood. “We’re done here.”
Martin’s face reddened. He said he had a gala to prepare for. I followed Clara into the hall, feeling the old urge to smooth things over. Part of me still wanted his denial to be enough. If I pushed too hard, I might be wrong about him. If I didn’t, Clara would be left carrying the cost.
At the staff entrance, she put her hand on the door bar and didn’t press it.
“My office has the gala packet,” she said. “I kept a copy because they changed the schedule twice.”
“Do you want to look at it?”
“I want to know what I’m looking at.”
She went upstairs. I waited by the public galleries while she searched her desk. When she came back, she held a thick packet against her chest. One corner had been bent, then flattened.
We spread the papers across a bench in the empty education room. Most were schedules, donor names, and floor plans. Near the back, Clara stopped turning pages.
The draft letter was on museum letterhead. Her name and job title were typed at the top. The first line said she was resigning from her position, effective immediately. Beneath the last paragraph was a printed signature line with her name under it.
Clara stared at the page. “What is this?”
I read it again, slower, as if the words might change. They didn’t.
“Did you sign it?” I asked.
“No.”
I saw the question land between us. I wanted to take it back, but she had already folded her arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She turned the page over. “This was in the packet from the gala?”
“It must have been.”
“No. I mean, how did it get here?”
She lifted the letter by its edges and looked at the blank signature line. Her thumb pressed hard into the paper. “I didn’t draft this.”
“I believe you.”
She set the letter down. “You asked if I signed it.”
“I know.”
