Chương 9
“It accelerated execution.”
“Yes.”
“Would I have signed that day without the wedding?”
Raymond looked toward the forensic accountant.
Nobody answered.
Walter had selected the date because he wanted finality. He told himself the trust represented a mature decision about legacy. In truth, he had also wanted the documents completed before Claire became his wife. He wanted to stand at the altar knowing there was nothing left for her to take.
Simon had encouraged the urgency.
He had said delay would create tax uncertainty. He had said Claire’s recent interest in company records made timing important. He had provided the message packet. He had described her procurement searches as estate research. He had never directly said she planned to leave after a year.
Walter had built that conclusion himself.
At home that evening, he found the bridal bouquet in the staff refrigerator.
“Why is this here?” he asked Mrs. Duffy, his housekeeper.
“The hotel sent it with the personal items.”
“It should have been discarded.”
“I can do that.”
He looked at the flowers. Several had browned at the edges. The ribbon was marked where Claire’s fingers had tightened around it.
“No,” he said. “Leave it.”
Mrs. Duffy closed the refrigerator door. She had worked in the Mercer household since before Eleanor became ill. She possessed the kind of authority that came from seeing powerful people in bathrobes.
“You frightened the kitchen staff,” she said.
“When?”
“Today. Yesterday. Most of the week.”
“I have not spoken to the kitchen staff.”
“That can also frighten people.”
Walter leaned on his cane. He had begun using it after the wedding, partly because his knee hurt and partly because Claire was no longer present to glare at him until he did.
“Do you have something you want to say?”
Mrs. Duffy folded a dish towel. “No.”
“You plainly do.”
“No, sir. I have something you want me to say so you can be angry at the correct person.”
Walter stared at her.
She opened the refrigerator again. “The flowers have another day at most.”
Claire returned to work the following Monday.
Not to her old position. That no longer existed. After leaving Mercer, she had joined a small hospitality consulting firm called Northline Projects, where she advised independent hotels on procurement controls and renovation budgets. The work paid well enough, though not enough to make her stop checking the total before ordering dinner.
Northline’s managing partner asked her to use the freight elevator.
“There are photographers in the lobby,” he explained.
“Then make them leave.”
“The lobby is public access.”
“It’s your building.”
“We lease half a floor.”
Claire looked at him. “Do you want me here?”
“Of course.”
“That sounded almost convincing.”
He closed the office door. “Two clients requested reassignment.”
“Which clients?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“They think I stole from Walter.”
“They think your visibility is a distraction.”
“My visibility?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. That’s why I want to hear you say it.”
He walked to the window, then turned back. “They don’t want their projects mentioned in stories about the wedding.”
“I haven’t mentioned them.”
“You don’t control what gets mentioned.”
“Neither do you.”
“No, but I control staffing.”
Claire felt something in her chest become very still.
“Are you firing me?”
“I’m asking you to take paid leave until this settles.”
“The financial review could take months.”
“We’ll reassess in thirty days.”
“And after thirty days?”
“We’ll reassess.”
She almost argued. Then she noticed the cardboard box beside his credenza.
It was already labeled with her name.
“You packed my desk?”
“Rachel did.”
“Before we met.”
“We wanted to avoid a scene.”
Claire looked at the box. Her coffee mug rested on top, wrapped in paper. The mug said MEASURE TWICE, APPROVE ONCE, a gift from a contractor who hated her until she saved him from ordering six hundred lamps with the wrong voltage.
“What exactly did you think I would do?”
Her employer’s face reddened. “Claire, don’t make this harder.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The sentence people use when they’ve already made the hard part yours.”
She took the box.
In the freight elevator, she stood beside a maintenance worker rolling two trash bins. He glanced at the box, then at her face.
“My wife saw the wedding,” he said.
Claire watched the floor numbers descend.
“I’m sorry,” he added.
“For which part?”
He considered this. “All of it, I guess.”
The elevator opened into the loading area.
“That makes two of us,” she said.
At her parents’ house, Martin was repairing a drawer that had stuck for eleven years.
He had removed it from the kitchen cabinet and set it upside down on the table. Wood shavings collected beside his coffee. Claire watched him run sandpaper along one edge, test the fit, remove it again, and sand another fraction.
“You could buy new slides,” she said.
“I could also burn the house down and start over.”
“That seems less efficient.”
“Depends how many drawers are involved.”
It was the first almost-normal exchange they had managed since the wedding.
Claire set her work box on the floor.
Her father looked at it. “Paid leave?”
“How did you know?”
“You don’t usually bring your mug home on Mondays.”
She sat across from him.
He sanded twice more before putting the paper down.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” she told him.
“I know.”
“That isn’t the same as accepting it.”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t have used the business against you.”
“No.”
“I was angry.”
“I noticed.”
She waited.
Martin blew sawdust from the drawer edge. “I’m sorry I asked whether you wanted his money like it was the same as wanting only his money.”
Claire looked at his hands. A pale scar crossed one thumb from the cabinet shop years.
“I did want some of what the money promised.”
“Everybody wants what money promises.”
“You didn’t.”
“I wanted it so badly I borrowed against your mother’s house.”
May you like
“That’s different.”
“It only looks different because I failed.”
