She shook her head once. Small and absolute. No, Marcus said into the phone. Tell her Ryan stopped. Something shifted in his voice.
The control slipped just a fraction. Tell her I found something in David's papers. Something she needs to know about. Marcus looked at Clare. She was watching him with her jaw tight and her hands still in his gripping slightly harder than before.
What did you find? Marcus said. That's between me and Clare. Then you're going to wait until she decides she wants to hear it, Marcus said. And that's not tonight.
This isn't something she should wait on, Ryan said. And now his voice had something different in it. Not aggression. Urgency, the unperformed kind, Marcus. I know you don't trust me.
I know what she thinks of me. But this is about David. What I found, she needs to know. Marcus held the phone and looked at Clare and didn't say anything because Ryan sounded different and Marcus was a man who had learned through years of working on machines that lied about what was wrong with them. To hear the difference between performed malfunction and something that was genuinely actually broken.
Ryan Whitmore right now sounded genuinely broken. I'll tell her, Marcus said. She'll be in touch. He hung up. The living room was silent.
Clare said, "What did he say?" Marcus looked at her. He said he found something in David's papers. Marcus said something he thinks you need to know. Clare stared at him.
Her hand still in his went cold. What kind of something? She whispered. He didn't say. She looked at the wall at nothing.
At something Marcus couldn't see. Clare, he said. She looked at him. Her eyes were different now. The warmth of 5 minutes ago was still there.
But underneath it was something older and more complicated. Something that had been sitting in her since before Marcus knew her name. Whatever it is, she said slowly. Been sitting in his papers since David died. For 4 years.