Chương 6
“I can fix this,” he said.
“With what?”
“There’s a buyer interested in the company.”
“Who?”
“Halcyon Interiors.”
Rebecca knew the name. Halcyon had tried to purchase Morgan Architectural Millwork three years earlier. Charles had refused because the company planned to consolidate production and eliminate the North Carolina shop.
“They’ll close the facility.”
“Not necessarily.”
“How many jobs?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You said you were protecting forty-three people.”
“I am trying.”
“With their jobs, Dad’s money, my card, and Melissa’s mortgage.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
His voice rose, then lowered again.
“You think I sleep?” he asked. “You think I put on that suit and that watch because I enjoy pretending? Every supplier meeting, every lender lunch, every conversation with a potential client starts with whether they think we’re stable. If I walk in looking scared, we’re finished.”
“You are finished if they discover the numbers you hid.”
“They know the numbers.”
“Does Halcyon?”
“They know enough.”
“That means no.”
“They know what they need to know at this stage.”
Rebecca closed the laptop.
“Do not call it a family account again.”
“Fine.”
“Do not use my card.”
“I can’t. You canceled it.”
“Do not ask Dad for money tonight.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Do not transfer anything, sell anything, or sign anything involving him before I see the documents.”
Jonathan laughed softly. “You don’t have authority.”
“No. But if you move assets or expand his exposure after tonight, I will make sure the bank asks questions you cannot answer comfortably.”
“You always did enjoy threatening people with process.”
“I enjoy process because it leaves fewer places for people like you to hide.”
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “I need seventy-two hours.”
“For what?”
“To close a bridge facility.”
“From whom?”
“A private lender.”
“At what rate?”
“That is not your concern.”
“It becomes my concern when you plan to pay it with money connected to our father.”
“I said I’m not touching Dad’s money.”
“You already did.”
Another car passed near him.
“I need seventy-two hours,” he repeated.
Rebecca looked toward the hallway leading to Ethan’s room.
“You have until ten tomorrow morning,” she said. “Bring me the company’s debt schedule, bank statements, accounts receivable, personal guarantees, the Halcyon correspondence, and every charge you put on my account.”
“You cannot audit a company in a day.”
“I’m not trying to audit it. I’m trying to find out whether you are lying about the size of the fire.”
“And if I don’t bring anything?”
“I call Dad’s attorney and the bank.”
“You would destroy the company.”
“No. I would stop helping you conceal what is destroying it.”
He ended the call without saying goodbye.
Rebecca did not sleep much. At six fifteen, she made coffee and stood by the kitchen window while the neighbor across the street dragged two trash bins to the curb in slippers. The ordinary movement steadied her. People put out garbage on Wednesday mornings even when someone else’s family business was collapsing.
Ethan came in wearing one sock.
“Do I have school?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She turned.
He leaned against the doorway, hair flattened on one side. He had inherited his father’s habit of asking for comfort indirectly.
“You have school,” she said. “And I’m taking you.”
“Are people going to know?”
“About dinner?”
He nodded.
“I don’t think so.”
“Sophie might tell.”
“She might.”
He found his second sock beneath the table. “Can I stay home if people know?”
“No.”
“That seems unfair.”
“It probably does.”
He sat and pulled on the sock.
Rebecca set toast in front of him. He stared at it.
“Is it a budget breakfast?”
The question was so quiet that she nearly missed it.
She sat beside him.
“No.”
“Because toast is cheap.”
“It is.”
“So how do I know?”
She had no answer prepared. That frightened her more than Jonathan’s call.
“You know because I am eating the same thing,” she said. “Because you had a choice. Because no one put it in front of you to make you feel smaller.”
Ethan picked up the toast. “Can cheap food be good?”
“Most good food was cheap before someone found a way to charge more for it.”
He smiled a little.
At school, he asked her not to walk him inside. She watched him cross the drop-off lane with his backpack held against both shoulders. He did not look back until he reached the entrance. Then he lifted one hand.
Rebecca returned home at nine forty.
Jonathan arrived at ten twenty-three carrying a banker’s box.
He wore gray slacks and a pale shirt without a tie. The absence of the suit made him look younger and more tired. There was no watch on his wrist.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I had to get records.”
“Come in.”
He set the box on her dining table. “This is what I could pull without alerting the controller.”
“The controller does not know?”
“She knows cash is tight.”
“Does she know payroll depends on a private loan?”
“No.”
“Does she know the line is fully drawn?”
“She sees the statements.”
“That was not my question.”
Jonathan looked around the room. Rebecca’s house was comfortable but not grand. She had bought it after the divorce and kept it after David’s death because Ethan knew which floorboards creaked and where the afternoon light fell in winter. Jonathan once described it as sensible, a word he used when he meant unimpressive.
“Do you have coffee?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“May I have some?”
The politeness unsettled her.
She poured him a cup. He drank it black, though he normally added cream.
May you like
They spent the next three hours at the table.
The company’s problems were worse than he had admitted and less simple than she had assumed. Calder owed Morgan Architectural Millwork nine hundred thousand dollars across completed and partially completed projects. The restructuring process might return twenty or thirty cents on the dollar, perhaps less, and not soon. Jonathan had already laid off seven temporary workers, stopped contributing to his own retirement account, and gone four months without a salary.
