Chương 4
“She thought Robert could save the company and I couldn’t.”
“Was she right?”
Henry gave a small, humorless smile.
“Probably.”
Margaret did not like the answer because it sounded human.
She wanted Robert to have been obviously wrong.
That would have been easier.
“Why did he tell me you died?”
“He didn’t tell you that at first.”
Margaret’s memory moved unwillingly.
Cape May.
1979.
Robert returning from a telephone booth outside a restaurant because Henry had called the house while they were away.
His face gray.
The terrible boat accident.
No body recovered.
A memorial with six people and no casket.
Robert saying Henry had been drinking.
Margaret sitting beside Robert’s mother while the woman stared at her own hands.
“Oh,” Margaret said.
Henry looked at her.
She remembered the beach photograph now.
Not the photograph itself.
The day.
Henry had been louder than Robert then. Funnier. He had borrowed Margaret’s sunglasses and made an obscene imitation of a movie star until she laughed so hard she spilled beer on her shorts.
Weeks later, she chose Robert.
Henry teased her about it.
Then, less than a year later, he was dead.
Except he had not been.
Margaret pressed her fingertips against her lips.
“You let me believe that.”
Henry’s eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
“For forty-seven years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“At first because I was angry.”
She waited.
“Then because too much time passed.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Daniel said, “He took money.”
Henry looked up.
Daniel’s voice sharpened.
“Tell her that part.”
Henry’s jaw worked.
Margaret said nothing.
Henry nodded.
“Robert paid me.”
“How much?”
“Enough to leave.”
“That’s not a number.”
“Three hundred thousand.”
In 1979, it was a fortune.
Margaret felt ill.
“For silence?”
“For my remaining claims. For silence. For staying away. Call it what you want.”
“So you sold your life?”
Henry looked at her then, and for the first time she saw anger.
“Twenty-six-year-old men sell things they regret later.”
Daniel said, “Especially when they’re losing.”
Henry stood.
Margaret raised one hand.
“Sit down, both of you.”
Neither man did.
She looked at Daniel.
“Did you know all this?”
“Not all of it.”
“How much?”
“Dad told me Henry had sold out and come back asking for money.”
Henry laughed.
Daniel turned.
“You did.”
“Six years ago. Yes.”
“For more money.”
“For an apology.”
“You asked for two hundred thousand dollars.”
“To settle something he never paid.”
Margaret looked between them.
“What?”
Henry closed his eyes briefly.
“Robert stopped sending the final installment.”
“You said three hundred thousand.”
“It was supposed to be four.”
Margaret let out a breath.
The dishwasher had moved on to basketball highlights.
Rain softened against the building.
Somebody in the kitchen dropped a tray.
Normal life continued with offensive confidence.
Margaret opened Robert’s warning again.
“Charleston ledger.”
Henry sat.
“There was a second set of company records in the seventies. My father kept one copy at the yard and one at our accountant’s office in Charleston after he moved there.”
“Why would Robert mention something fifty years old in a warning about Daniel?”
Henry did not answer.
Daniel did.
“Because Dad was a paranoid old man at the end.”
Margaret looked at him.
Daniel shrugged.
“He became obsessed with everybody taking things from him. Employees. Vendors. Me. He changed passwords every week. He thought people were moving files.”
“Were they?”
Daniel’s eyes held hers.
“Sometimes.”
The access road reopened shortly after midnight.
Margaret refused Daniel’s offer to drive her home.
She refused Henry’s too.
She called a car service and waited in the club lobby wearing a pair of rubber deck shoes the bartender found in lost-and-found.
Daniel stayed near the doors.
Henry sat at the opposite end of the lobby with the suitcase between his feet.
Nobody spoke.
When the driver arrived, Margaret picked up the suitcase herself.
Henry touched the handle.
“Robert wanted me to—”
“Not tonight.”
He released it.
Daniel followed her outside.
The rain had weakened to a steady fall.
“Mom.”
She kept walking.
“Please don’t call anyone until we talk.”
Margaret stopped under the awning.
Daniel’s face was pale beneath the yellow parking-lot lights.
He looked tired.
Not criminal.
Not monstrous.
Tired.
That made it worse.
“Who shouldn’t I call?”
Daniel swallowed.
“The bank.”
“Which bank?”
His hesitation gave her the answer she needed.
She got into the car.
At two thirteen in the morning, sitting at her kitchen table in Robert’s old bathrobe because she could not get warm, Margaret called Elaine Mercer again.
This time Elaine answered.
“What happened?”
No hello.
Margaret almost cried at the sound of her voice.
She did not.
“I found Robert’s note.”
Silence.
Then Elaine said, “Where is Daniel?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the original trust?”
“With me.”
“Keep it with you.”
“Henry is alive.”
Another silence.
Longer.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
Margaret looked at the dark kitchen window.
“Did everyone know except me?”
“No.”
“That isn’t as comforting as you think.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you.”
That sounded like Elaine.
She had retired two years earlier and moved inland with a woman named Denise whom Robert had always referred to as Elaine’s friend even after Margaret told him repeatedly they had been married since 2016.
“What did Daniel ask you to sign?”
Margaret read the document titles.
Elaine interrupted before she finished.
“Don’t sign anything.”
“I gathered that.”
“Take photographs of every page.”
“They’re here.”
“Daniel’s copies?”
“No.”
“Did you see a lender name?”
Margaret thought.
“There was a packet in his briefcase.”
“Did you see the cover?”
“Atlantic Crown.”
Elaine exhaled.
“Commercial lender.”
“You know them?”
“I know of them.”
“Is Daniel in trouble?”
“Probably.”
“How much trouble?”
“I retired because people kept asking me questions like that at two in the morning.”
Margaret almost smiled.
Almost.
Elaine’s voice softened.
“Do you still have your power-of-attorney documents?”
“In the safe.”
“Get them in the morning. And the trust amendments.”
“They’re in the suitcase.”
“Good.”
May you like
“What did Robert tell you?”
“Enough that I made him write the warning himself.”
