Chương 5
“I’m not willing to take that chance. Where are you sleeping?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re sleeping here.”
“Samantha, your apartment is a fourth-floor walk-up.”
“It builds character.”
“I’m thirty-nine weeks pregnant.”
“Then I’ll bring snacks and we’ll stay at a hotel.”
Madeline looked toward the scattered gifts.
“I have nowhere to put all this.”
“Leave the presents. I’m more interested in the thirty million dollars.”
“That is unfortunately the sentence everyone is going to be saying tomorrow.”
Samantha went quiet.
“Do you want me to call Ethan?”
“No.”
“Your dad?”
“No.”
“Anyone?”
“Just come get me.”
“I’m coming.”
Madeline ended the call.
She spent the next half hour reading Ethan’s phone.
It was the cruelest thing she had ever done to herself voluntarily.
The messages with Donovan became clearer as she moved backward through time.
Ethan had first contacted the FBI in early December.
He had not been recruited.
He had approached them.
He sent documents.
He asked about his own legal exposure.
He repeatedly asked whether Madeline needed to be told.
Donovan repeatedly told him that she could not advise him about his marriage but that alerting anyone connected to Richard might compromise the investigation.
There were arguments in text form.
Ethan: She isn’t connected to the business.
Donovan: She is Whitmore’s daughter and the named parent of the proposed beneficiary.
Ethan: She would never warn him.
Donovan: You cannot know what someone will do when a parent may face prison.
Ethan: I know my wife.
Donovan: Then make your own decision. But understand the investigative risk.
Three days later:
Ethan: I won’t tell her.
Madeline had to stop reading.
Not because Donovan had ordered him.
Because she had not.
That mattered.
He had made a choice.
The phone buzzed.
A new message appeared from Ethan.
I’m at the house. I’ll pack a bag and leave. I won’t contact you again tonight unless you ask.
Madeline stared at it.
Then another message arrived.
I am sorry.
She deleted neither.
Samantha arrived wearing pajama pants beneath a raincoat despite the fact that it had not rained.
She climbed aboard, took one look at Madeline, and hugged her carefully around the belly.
“You’re huge.”
“Thank you.”
“I say that with love.”
“You always do.”
Samantha had met Richard a hundred times and never liked him.
Not because she thought he was corrupt.
Because, according to Samantha, Richard had the irritating habit of listening to people as if he were waiting for a useful fact to emerge.
She had tolerated Ethan better.
Sometimes she liked him.
Sometimes she accused him of being “financially haunted.”
Tonight she said nothing about either man until they were inside a hotel room overlooking the harbor.
Madeline sat on the edge of the bed while Samantha removed six decorative pillows and threw them into a chair.
“Hotels are insane,” Samantha muttered. “Who needs this many pillows?”
Madeline watched her.
“Seth knew.”
Samantha stopped.
Madeline realized she had used Samantha’s ex-husband’s name.
“What?”
“When you found out Seth was having the affair. Other people knew.”
Samantha sat beside her.
“Some.”
“What was worse?”
“The affair.”
“No. I mean, was it worse that people knew?”
Samantha considered.
“At first.”
“Why only at first?”
“Because eventually I understood they didn’t all know the same thing. One person saw him with her. One person heard a rumor. One person thought we had an arrangement. People are messy. They hold fragments and pretend fragments are whole stories.”
Madeline looked at Ethan’s phone.
“I have fragments.”
“Yeah.”
“And a federal investigation.”
“That’s a pretty substantial fragment.”
Madeline leaned backward and stared at the ceiling.
“Do you think he used the pregnancy?”
“I think you need to find out what that means before you decide.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“I hate when that happens.”
Madeline closed her eyes.
A few seconds later Samantha asked, “Do you want crackers?”
“No.”
“I brought some anyway.”
“Of course you did.”
Samantha opened a package.
The sound was absurdly loud in the room.
Madeline started laughing.
Then crying again.
Samantha handed her a cracker.
By morning the story was online.
Not the whole story.
Just enough to ruin several lives.
FEDERAL AGENTS QUESTION BILLIONAIRE RICHARD WHITMORE DURING DAUGHTER’S BABY SHOWER.
The headline was inaccurate in three ways before breakfast.
Richard was not technically a billionaire.
The agents had not merely questioned him.
And the party had taken place on a yacht, which the article somehow failed to mention even though three photographs clearly showed it.
Madeline discovered that public humiliation came with factual sloppiness.
Her phone contained 117 unread messages.
By nine, it was 183.
By ten, her father’s communications director had issued a statement.
Mr. Whitmore is cooperating fully with federal authorities regarding a routine inquiry into historic business transactions. Any suggestion that funds were improperly placed in his unborn grandchild’s name is false and defamatory.
Madeline read it twice.
Then called Richard’s communications director.
He answered with obvious reluctance.
“Madeline.”
“Take my daughter out of the statement.”
A pause.
“I’m sorry?”
“You mentioned her.”
“We said the suggestion was false.”
“You confirmed there is a suggestion.”
“The reporting already—”
“I don’t care. She is not part of his defense.”
“Your father approved the language.”
“My daughter did not.”
Another pause.
“I’ll speak to him.”
“You’ll change it.”
“I cannot make that decision unilaterally.”
Madeline hung up.
Twenty minutes later, the statement was revised.
That small victory made her feel better for approximately forty seconds.
Then Ethan’s mother called.
Madeline stared at the name.
She almost ignored it.
Instead she answered.
“Hi, Diane.”
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Madeline closed her eyes.
She did not want sweetheart.
Not from anyone.
Diane Cole was a retired middle-school principal from Pennsylvania who treated emotional emergencies like snow days: remain calm, inventory resources, feed everyone.
“Is Ethan with you?” Diane asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
Madeline blinked.
“What?”
“I love my son. I currently would not recommend being in a room with him.”
Despite everything, Madeline smiled.
“He told you?”
May you like
“Enough to make me furious.”
“How much is enough?”
