“I don’t know.”
“Who else could access it?”
“The foundation archive team. Senior administration. Possibly legal.”
I stared at him.
“Was it confidential?”
“It was marked personal, not legally restricted.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“No.”
He took the copied page from me and studied it.
“This came from a scanned file.”
“How can you tell?”
“The handwritten original had a coffee stain near the bottom.”
I looked at him.
“You remember a coffee stain from eight years ago?”
“I remember that letter.”
“Why?”
He met my eyes.
“Because it was one of the few letters I have ever received that frightened me.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“Daniel could be very dramatic when he wanted to be.”
“He wasn’t being dramatic.”
“Then tell me what he meant.”
Adrian rested both hands against the table.
“Daniel and I became friends.”
The simplicity of it hurt more than I expected.
“Friends.”
“Yes.”
“And he never told me.”
“He may have assumed you knew.”
“I knew the names of his friends.”
“I wasn’t part of his regular life.”
“Apparently you were important enough for a personal letter.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“I deserved that.”
“I’m not trying to punish you.”
“I know.”
I turned toward the window.
“I just hate discovering parts of him I never knew existed.”
“That doesn’t mean he was hiding them from you.”
“I know.”
But knowing something intellectually and feeling it were rarely the same thing.
Adrian opened the archive box.
Inside were folders, photographs, meeting agendas, and old project notes.
“Daniel and I met because of work,” he said. “That part was true. But a few months later, my mother became ill.”
I turned back.
I knew Adrian’s mother had died years ago.
Almost everyone in business knew the outline. Caroline Kane, philanthropist, patron of the arts, wife of industrialist William Kane.
What nobody knew was what losing her had done to her son.
“I started spending most nights at the hospital,” Adrian continued. “I ran the company during the day. I went there afterward. I told almost no one.”
“Daniel knew?”
