Chương 9
“I don’t know.”
“Check where he keeps it.”
Melissa did not answer.
“Melissa.”
“I am not searching my husband’s things for you.”
“Then search them for yourself.”
The call ended.
Jonathan did not answer Rebecca’s next three calls.
At six, Charles called and asked whether she and Ethan wanted to come for dinner.
His voice sounded normal. That made her uneasy.
“Did Jonathan talk to you?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“He said he would tomorrow.”
“About the business?”
Rebecca sat down.
“What do you know?”
“Enough to know last night was not the beginning.”
“Dad, we need to talk in person.”
“I made chili.”
“You made chili?”
“Your mother supervised aggressively.”
In the background, Patricia said, “I can hear you.”
Charles lowered his voice unnecessarily. “She browned the meat.”
Rebecca looked toward the stairs. Ethan was in his room doing homework.
“We’ll come.”
Patricia and Charles lived in the same brick colonial where Rebecca and Jonathan had grown up. The kitchen had been renovated twice, but the drawer beside the stove still stuck in damp weather. Charles pulled it hard, and silverware shifted inside with a familiar clatter.
“I keep telling him not to yank it,” Patricia said.
“It has resisted diplomacy.”
Ethan sat at the table drawing on the back of an envelope. The retirement card stood on the counter beside a bowl of apples.
For ten minutes, they discussed ordinary things. Ethan’s spelling test. A loose railing on the back steps. Whether chili required beans. Charles insisted it did not. Patricia said he had eaten beans in chili for forty years without complaint.
The normal conversation felt artificial at first, then necessary.
After dinner, Ethan went to the den to watch a nature program. Patricia carried bowls to the sink and refused Rebecca’s help.
Charles sat at the table with both hands around a mug of decaffeinated coffee.
“I called Denise,” he said.
Rebecca looked at him.
“She would not tell me numbers. She said Jonathan should.”
“He was supposed to tell you tomorrow.”
“That means the numbers are bad.”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
Patricia stopped rinsing a bowl.
Rebecca had promised Jonathan until morning. She had not promised to lie.
“The company is overdrawn. The line of credit is fully used. Your guaranty may expose you after the assets are sold.”
“How much?”
“Potentially several hundred thousand after liquidation. Maybe more. The exact amount depends on asset values and the Calder recovery.”
Patricia turned off the water.
Charles stared into his coffee.
“And the house?” she asked.
“Jonathan considered a bridge loan that would require the house as collateral. He says he did not agree to it.”
“He considered it?”
“Yes.”
Patricia sat beside Charles.
For once, she did not blame Rebecca for the information.
Charles rubbed his thumb along the mug handle. “The continuing guaranty was my idea.”
Rebecca remembered Ellen’s warning.
“What?”
“The bank wanted Jonathan’s personal guaranty when we expanded the North Carolina shop. I told them mine was stronger.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“You were already planning to retire.”
“I was not planning very well.”
“Did you know the credit line increased?”
“I signed an annual consent the first year. After that, Jonathan said the renewals were routine.”
“Did you read them?”
His eyes remained on the coffee.
“No.”
Patricia said, “Charles.”
“I trusted him.”
Rebecca sat back.
There was the family’s favorite sentence. It could mean love, laziness, fear of conflict, or a desire to make someone else responsible for not disappointing you.
Charles lifted his gaze. “I also wanted the expansion.”
“Why?”
“Because Jonathan wanted it.”
“That is not a reason.”
“It was then.”
He took off his glasses.
“When you left the company after that summer internship, I told myself you were too restless for it. That was easier than admitting I had made the place miserable for you. Jonathan stayed. I thought supporting his expansion showed him I believed in him.”
“Did you?”
Charles looked toward the den, where a narrator described the migration of monarch butterflies.
“I believed he needed me to.”
Patricia reached for his hand.
This time he allowed it.
The doorbell rang at eight twenty.
Jonathan stood on the porch.
He no longer had the Rolex. His shirt was untucked at one side, and his eyes were red, though Rebecca could not tell whether he had been drinking.
Charles opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
Jonathan looked past him and saw Rebecca.
“You told them.”
“Yes.”
“You gave me until tomorrow.”
“Dad asked me directly.”
“You could have said we were meeting tomorrow.”
“I could have lied.”
Jonathan laughed once. “We are all very impressed.”
He entered and set an envelope on the kitchen counter.
“What is that?” Patricia asked.
“Cashier’s check for Harrington House.”
Rebecca looked at his bare wrist.
“You sold the watch.”
“I returned it to the jeweler. They kept the deposit and fees.”
“How much did you get back?”
“Enough for the dinner balance and part of the mortgage.”
Melissa appeared in the doorway behind him.
No one had heard her car.
She wore jeans and a dark sweater, and she carried Jonathan’s leather overnight bag.
“I drove him,” she said. “His SUV is at the dealership.”
Jonathan looked at the bag.
Melissa placed it on the floor.
“The children are with my sister,” she continued. “I told them we had grown-up problems to solve. I did not tell them what kind.”
Patricia stood. “Melissa, you can both stay here tonight.”
“No,” Melissa said. “He can.”
Jonathan’s face hardened. “We discussed this.”
“You discussed. I listened.”
“Not in front of everyone.”
“That rule has served you very well.”
Ethan appeared in the hall.
Rebecca rose. “Buddy, go back to the den.”
He looked at Jonathan’s bare wrist.
“Did you lose your watch?”
Jonathan’s hand moved reflexively toward the place where it had been.
“I returned it,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t afford it.”
Ethan considered this with the grave attention children give to adults who answer honestly.
May you like
“Okay.”
He went back to the den.
