Chapter 8 - The Shadow of Chloe
Three weeks later, autumn had arrived in Massachusetts, turning the oak trees surrounding the Brookline estate into brilliant cascades of crimson and gold.
I stood in the library, looking over a draft of the new foundation prospectus that David Miller had delivered that morning.
With forty million dollars from the liquidated Vance medical funds, Julian and I had created the Genevieve Vance Foundation for Minor Protection—an independent organization dedicated to auditing private international adoption agencies and providing legal, medical, and psychological support to children exploited within unregulated medical guardianships.
My phone rang on the desk.
I picked it up, seeing an unknown number with an Boston area code.
"Hello?" I said softly.
"Genevieve... please don't hang up."
The voice was faint, raspy, and punctuated by the clear sound of a medical oxygen machine humming in the background.
It was Chloe.
I held the phone tightly against my ear, my posture stiffening automatically. "Chloe."
"I know... I know you hate me," she gasped softly, coughing twice before regaining her breath. "I know what my parents did to you... I saw the papers in the news... Genevieve, I swear to God... I didn't know."
I stood unmoving near the window, watching the dry leaves drift down onto the driveway.
"You didn't know, Chloe?" I asked, my voice flat. "You didn't know why I was pulled out of school every time you had a fever? You didn't know why I had surgical drains in my side when we were twelve years old while you were playing in the garden?"
"They told me... they told me you had a rare form of anemia!" Chloe cried out, her voice breaking into raspy sobs. "They told me we were being treated together! I was a child, Genevieve! I trusted my father!"
"We were both children, Chloe," I said quietly. "But when you turned eighteen, you kept taking the treatments. You never asked where the blood came from. You never asked why I looked like a ghost every time you felt better."
Silence filled the line, save for the rhythmic hiss-click of the oxygen machine.
"I'm dying, Genevieve," Chloe whispered, her voice hollow, stripped of all the spoiled, golden confidence she had possessed her entire life. "My kidney function is below ten percent. The doctors say I won't make it to Christmas unless I find a matching donor... My father is in jail. My mother won't stop crying... I'm terrified."
I closed my eyes, feeling the faint ache in my lower left flank where my own left kidney had been removed ten years ago to keep her alive.
"What do you want from me, Chloe?" I asked softly.
"I just... I wanted to ask if you could ever forgive me," she wept. "I'm not asking for your help. I know I have no right to ask for anything... I just don't want to die knowing that you hate me."
I opened my eyes, looking out at the bright, open horizon beyond the trees.
"I don't hate you, Chloe," I said, every word chosen with immense care. "Hate takes too much energy, and I have spent too many years giving my energy to your family. But I cannot save you anymore. I have paid my debt to the Sterling family ten times over."
"I know," she choked out. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Genevieve..."
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"Goodbye, Chloe," I said softly, and lowered the phone.
I stood there for a long time, listening to the quiet house. I didn't feel triumph. I didn't feel joy. I simply felt the heavy, quiet closure of a door that had been left open for twenty years.
