kept an office in Beijing, and Carey was one of its full-time attorneys. Matt had flown over there more than a few times, on business. Maggie’d even gone with him once, three years before. She’d met Carey — tall, elegant, faintly dissipated. Matt had said he was a gifted negotiator. “I remember.”
“Some year,” he said, his manner disintegrating slightly.
“You’re telling me.” She unlocked the car and climbed in.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m surviving.” What was this about? Everything had been over months ago with the firm, even the kindness calls, even the check-ins from Matt’s closest friends here in the L.A. office. She hadn’t heard from any of them lately.
“I’m calling, actually, because I’ve come across something. I really should have seen it before. Unfortunately I didn’t. It’s a legal filing, here in China. It concerns Matt.”
“Matt?”
“Yes,” Carey said. “It’s a claim.”
“What do you mean? What kind?”
Carey drew a breath. She could feel him teetering. “I was hoping there was a chance you might know,” he said.
“Know what? Carey. What kind of claim?”
“Paternity,” he said.
She sat for a long moment. A bell seemed to drop around her, cutting out all sound. She stared through her sea-scummed windshield at the line of palms, the bike path, the mottled sand. “So this person is saying — ”
“She has his child. So I guess you didn’t know anything about this.”
She swallowed. “No. I did not. Did you? Did you know about a child?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Nothing.”
“So what do you think this is?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But I do know one thing: you can’t ignore it. It’s serious. A claim has been filed. Under the new Children’s Rights Treaty, it can be decided right here in China, in a way that’s binding on you. And it is going to be decided, soon.” She heard him turning pages. “In — a little less than three weeks.”
“Then what?”
“Then if the person who filed the claim wins, they get a share of his estate. Excluding the house, of course — the principal residence.”
To this she said nothing. She had sold the house. “Just tell me, Carey. What should I do?”
“There’s only one option. Get a test and prove whether it’s true or false. If it’s false, we can take care of it. If it turns out the other way, that will be different.”
“If it’s true, you mean? How can it be true?”
“You can’t expect me to answer that,” he said.
She was silent.
“The important thing is to get a lab test, now. If I have that in hand before the ruling, I can head it off. Without that, nothing.”
“So go ahead. Get one. I’ll pay the firm to do it.”
“That won’t work,” said Carey. “This matter is already on the calendar with the Ministry of Families, and we’re a law firm. We’d have to do it by bureaucracy — file papers to request permission from the girl’s family, for instance. It would never happen by the deadline. It won’t work for us to do it. But somebody else could get the family’s permission and get the test and let us act on the results. That would be all right.”
“You mean me,” she said.
“I don’t know who else. It’s important, Maggie. We’ll help you. Give you a translator. You can use the company apartment. You still have Matt’s key?”
“I think so.”
“Then get a flight. Come in to the office when you arrive.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said. “About everything, about Matt. It’s terrible.”
“I know.”
“None of this was supposed to happen.”
She took a long breath. He means Matt, hit by a car on the sidewalk. Killed along with two other people. Random. “I’ve wrestled with that one,” she said. “So this child — ”
“A little girl.”
She closed her eyes. “This girl is how old?”
“Five.”
That meant something would have to have happened six years ago. Maggie scrolled back frantically. It didn’t make sense. They were happy then. “If you’ll give me the months involved I’ll go back through my diaries and see if he was even in China then. I mean, maybe it isn’t even possible. If he wasn’t there — ”
This time Carey cut her off. “Winter of 2002,” he said softly. “I already checked. He was.”
The next morning she was waiting in the hallway when Sarah, her editor, stepped from the elevator.
“What are you doing here?” Sarah said. “You look terrible.”
“I was up all night.”
“Why?”
“Bad news about Matt.”
“Matt?” Sarah’s eyes widened. Matt was dead. There could be no more bad news.