Chương 5
Margaret’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he was my client.”
“I was your client too.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So he gave me information in a meeting he scheduled separately.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Is that legal?”
“Margaret, please don’t ask me for an ethics lecture tonight. The short answer is that I told him I would not participate in deceiving you. I also told him he should tell you himself.”
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
“And you let that stand.”
Elaine’s voice remained steady.
“Yes.”
Margaret hated her for three seconds.
Then she hated Robert again.
It was becoming crowded.
“Tomorrow,” Elaine said, “we find you independent counsel.”
“You were my lawyer.”
“I was your family’s lawyer. That’s exactly why I shouldn’t be the one handling this now.”
That answer, too, sounded irritatingly reasonable.
Margaret looked at Robert’s empty chair.
“Elaine.”
“Yes.”
“What is the Charleston ledger?”
The line went quiet.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Robert wrote it.”
Another pause.
“Henry has it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask him.”
“Why?”
“Because if Daniel is trying to move trust property, Robert believed those records might explain the pattern.”
“What pattern?”
Elaine’s answer came carefully.
“Men in your family confusing access with ownership.”
After they hung up, Margaret sat in the kitchen until dawn.
At six thirty she made coffee and forgot to put grounds in the machine.
She drank hot water before noticing.
At seven she found her tan shoes still in the yacht-club tote bag Daniel had given her last Christmas. The leather had hardened overnight.
She put them in the trash.
Then she took them out.
Throwing away shoes because her son might be attempting fraud felt too theatrical.
She left them beside the sink instead.
At eight eleven, Daniel arrived.
Margaret saw him through the kitchen window.
He parked at the end of the driveway, where Robert used to park when he came home angry because it meant he had twenty extra yards to calm down before reaching the door.
Daniel sat in the car for almost a minute.
Then he came inside using his key.
Margaret was waiting in the front hall.
“Give me that.”
Daniel looked at the key in his hand.
“Mom.”
“The key.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Then giving it back should be easy.”
He placed it on the entry table.
Margaret slid it into her raincoat pocket.
Neither mentioned that Daniel probably had another copy.
“You talked to Elaine.”
It was not a question.
Margaret said, “How do you know?”
“She called me.”
That surprised her.
“What did she say?”
“To get counsel.”
“Good advice.”
“She also told me not to contact the lender.”
Margaret leaned against the wall.
“So there is a lender.”
Daniel looked tired enough to be ill.
“Yes.”
“How much do you owe?”
“The company owes it.”
“How much?”
“Four-point-eight total.”
Margaret stared.
“You said two-point-three.”
“That’s the immediate shortfall.”
“What happened?”
He walked into the living room without permission.
Margaret followed.
Daniel stood before the fireplace. Robert’s photograph from their fortieth anniversary still sat on the mantel because Margaret had never decided where else to put it.
Daniel looked at the photograph.
“We bought the south marina parcel.”
“You already owned land there.”
“Not the waterfront easement.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means without it the project was worth half what we modeled.”
“Then why buy it?”
“Because we had commitments.”
“From whom?”
“Investors.”
“Whose idea?”
“Mine.”
The word hung there.
Margaret sat.
Daniel remained standing.
“For a while it worked,” he said. “Boat storage was strong. Commercial service was up. We had preliminary leases for the retail space. Then construction costs jumped. Financing changed. One investor pulled out.”
“And you borrowed more.”
“Yes.”
“Against what?”
“Company assets.”
“And then?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Personal guarantees.”
“Your house?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“My retirement accounts aren’t pledgeable the way you mean.”
“Daniel.”
“Yes. My house.”
Margaret considered this.
“What were you planning to do with mine?”
His expression hardened.
“Not take it.”
“The papers said transfer.”
“To an LLC.”
“You control.”
“For financing.”
“Which means debt.”
“Temporary debt.”
Margaret laughed then.
Not because anything was funny.
Daniel flinched.
“You sound like your father.”
“Don’t.”
“Temporary debt.”
“Mom.”
“He used to say that.”
“You don’t know what I was trying to prevent.”
“What?”
“Two hundred people losing jobs.”
There it was.
The morally useful number.
Daniel had always been good with numbers.
Margaret had attended company Christmas parties. She knew some of those employees. She knew whose daughter had leukemia, whose husband coached high-school baseball, whose mother lived upstairs in an apartment over a laundromat.
Daniel saw the hesitation.
He came closer.
“If the lender calls the note, we’re done.”
“And my house fixes that?”
“It gives us collateral for a bridge facility.”
“For how long?”
“Ninety days.”
“And after ninety?”
“We refinance.”
“If you can.”
“Yes.”
“And if you can’t?”
Daniel did not answer.
Margaret looked toward the bay window.
The storm had stripped leaves from the maple near the road. They were plastered across the lawn like green scraps of paper.
“You told me the papers were for insurance.”
Daniel sat opposite her.
“I knew you’d say no if I explained it over the phone.”
“That should have told you something.”
“I was going to explain before you signed.”
“At a storm shelter?”
“I panicked.”
“No. Panic is forgetting your wallet. You had documents prepared.”
Daniel’s face went red.
“I was trying to save Dad’s company.”
“It’s your company.”
“He built it.”
“And you run it.”
“He built everything.”
Margaret watched him.
Something in the sentence sounded smaller than anger.
“He told you it would be yours.”
Daniel’s eyes shifted toward the mantel.
“When I was twelve.”
Margaret said nothing.
“He took me to the yard on Sundays. He’d point at buildings and say, One day you’re responsible for all this. Not own. Responsible. He liked that word.”
Margaret remembered.
May you like
Robert used responsibility the way priests used sin.
“He told me the house mattered because the family land stayed together. He told me never to sell. Never split it. Never let outsiders control it.”
