By 8:20 Wednesday morning, a woman at the Larkin Street gate was filming my daughter's hair.
The photo had gone up overnight. A long lens, 14 Wick Street, me on the steps with Bea's hand in mine, her white streak bright as chalk. THORNE'S SECRET DAUGHTER, the headline said. Under it, in quotation marks, four words I had typed myself: "You have my face."
A dozen parents stood at the gate and found something else to look at. Then back at me.
"Fact," Bea said. "That lady is taking my picture. She didn't ask."
The aftercare director met us at the door with her hands folded. "Maybe Bea takes a few days," she said. "Just until it settles. For her sake."
For her sake is what people say when they mean their own. I had been suspended for twenty-four hours, rent was due the next morning at $1,640, and now my daughter was a problem to be managed. I signed her in anyway, full day and aftercare, and watched the director write the time.
Someone had sat outside my building before dawn with a long lens. I wanted a name. I also wanted one fact I could put in front of Gideon that he couldn't call mine, because last night he had walked out with a forged check on his phone and Bea's invitation against his chest, and I couldn't tell which one he believed.
Stuart Montclair was on the courthouse steps at 9:40, holding a coffee and a pastry in one hand and his phone in the other. I have sat across from that man a hundred times.
"The famous Ms. Kerr," he said, delighted. "Should I be photographed with you?"
"Did you sell my picture?"
"Carrie. I sell shares. Photographs are a hobby." He bit the pastry. "Wasn't me. I admit I'd have paid."
"Somebody was outside my building before dawn."
"I'm sure somebody was." He wiped his fingers, taking his time, enjoying every second of it. "You've earned a free fact, and I'm in a generous mood. Your transcript. The expedited one Marnie Shaw is certifying. Two orders. Mine, and a second, billed to Thorne Harbor Holdings, Office of the Chair."
"Not Legal."
"Not Legal. Not Litigation. There's only one Chair, and she doesn't read transcripts for pleasure." He raised the coffee to me. "Give the girl my regards."
The lobby desk of Thorne Harbor Tower smelled of lemon polish. The guard at it ran his finger down a list twice.
"Ms. Kerr isn't expected. Any visit from Ms. Kerr is routed to Legal, ma'am."
"I'll wait," I said, and he looked at my face and didn't send for anyone. Then an elevator opened behind him and Gideon stepped out, no jacket, sleeves pushed up.
"She's with me," he said.
We rode up in brushed steel, looking at the numbers. In his office, forty floors above the street, I didn't sit.
"Monday," I said. "10:42, Bea says, 'You have my face.' She says, 'I'm Bea.' 10:44, Draycott calls the break. In the elevator you ask her whole name and she says, 'Bea.' 10:51, the lobby doors open and your mother says, 'Hello, Beatrix.' Seven minutes. Nobody in that room said Beatrix. Not Montclair. Not Draycott. Not you. Not me."
Two fingers tapped the desk. Stopped.
He pressed a button. "Mother, would you come in?"
She was there in under a minute, silver hair, pearls, the camel coat over one arm as if she'd been about to leave. "Caroline," Celia said warmly. "How good of you to come in person."
Gideon repeated it to her, my times, my seven minutes. He didn't soften it. I watched her listen with her head slightly tilted, like a woman at a recital.
"Darling, Draycott telephoned me from the break. Of course he did. A mother is told when her son sits beside a child who says he has her face." She turned to me, kind. "I asked an investigator we keep for the family to pull the birth certificate at once. Beatrix June Kerr. Your name, Caroline, and a blank where the father should be."
"Born in Penhallow Point," I said. "That's another county. Seven minutes, Mrs. Thorne. Clerks don't answer phones that fast, and they don't email certificates."
"People are so much quicker when they are paid to be."
She smiled. It was a lovely smile. It closed like a door.
Then she took a cream card from her sleeve and held it out. A number in navy ink, handwritten. "My private line. In case you'd like to talk, woman to woman."
I took it, because refusing would have been a speech, and put it in my pocket without reading it. I looked at Gideon. He was looking at the card, then at his mother's face, then at me, and I watched him decide not to decide.
"I need time," he said.
"You had five years," I said, and hated it as it left my mouth.
"I need to find out who I'm angry at." He opened the door for me. "Please don't call the building."
"Noted," I said, and gave him his own word back, and he flinched.
At the elevator Celia's voice followed me, pleasant, unhurried. "Do give Beatrix my love."
By five Bea was at our kitchen table with all sixty-four crayons laid out in rows, drawing him. She does faces from memory. She did the jaw first, then the eyes, then a long careful pause at the left temple.
"He dyes it," she said. "I can tell. Fact. So I'm going to do it white."
She did it white.
"Mommy. Is he coming to my party?"
"He said he would."
"People say that." She tapped two fingers on the paper. "Number eleven's still saved. I'm not giving it to anybody."
I had nothing to say to that, so I put the kettle on.
At 6:00 I opened the laptop on the counter for the local news. I told myself it was to see whether the photo had spread. I knew better.
Gideon was standing outside the tower, in the same suit I'd seen that morning, with reporters closing in. A woman's voice carried over the others. "Mr. Thorne, is it true you have a daughter?"
He looked straight into the lens. I knew that face. It was the boardroom one, and it didn't blink.
"I have no daughter."
The kettle began to scream behind me. I didn't move.
On the rug, Bea had stopped coloring. She sat very still with the purple crayon in her hand. Then she closed the notebook on his face, turned it over, and laid the crayon on top so it couldn't open again.