"You would have done the same for me," Anna said.
Christina considered that, then smiled faintly. "I hope I would have done it sooner."
Martin offered to arrange a driver, but Christina said her own SUV was waiting outside and she wanted to return to it under her own power. William asked Peter to have the car's documentation emailed to an address Christina would choose if she still wanted it later. He also asked for the complete incident footage to be preserved under the gallery's normal records policy, with access limited to the people responsible for review.
"Nothing gets deleted," he said to Martin quietly. "No one gets coached. Nobody loses hours because they answered a question truthfully. And don't put my grandmother on display as a story about how quickly we corrected ourselves."
"Understood," Martin replied. "I'll engage outside counsel to make the process independent."
William studied him for a moment. "We should have known more about what was happening here before today. That's on both of us."
The admission startled Martin more than any order might have. He had managed the gallery for years and prided himself on low insurance losses, elegant facilities, and strong operating margins. William's company had purchased its controlling interest eighteen months earlier to finance expansion and modernize inventory management, and from the outside the business appeared well run. But an ownership group could look at spreadsheets and still fail to see the way a woman at the reception desk learned to lower her eyes.
"You're right," Martin said. "We should have."
Outside, Christina stood under the covered entrance while William had her SUV brought around. The autumn sun reflected against the glass, and the city beyond it looked ordinary and untroubled. She thought about the savings in her account, the photograph folded in her purse, and the birthday surprise that had become something she had never planned.
"I ruined it," she said, almost to herself.
William stopped. "What?"
"Your surprise. I wanted to see your face on your birthday. I wanted you to know somebody had been thinking about that little boy and his blue cars all these years. Instead you've spent half the morning dealing with my troubles."
He turned fully toward her. "Grandma, you were trying to do something beautiful. You didn't ruin anything."
"It doesn't feel beautiful anymore."
William put an arm around her shoulders. "Then we'll leave the car here until it does. Or we'll forget the car. You get to decide what makes you happy, not me and certainly not him."
For the first time since entering the showroom, Christina allowed herself to lean against him. She felt the steady warmth of the boy she had once held through long nights when he cried for a mother who was never coming home. He was larger now, his life filled with work she did not entirely understand, but the hand resting against her shoulder was still the same hand that had brought her crayon drawings and broken toys, asking whether she thought they could be fixed.