Chapter 6: The Last Conversation Between Siblings
It took three days.
Marcus spent the first of them on the phone with his attorney, a woman named Patricia who had represented the firm since its founding and who, when Marcus explained the situation, said only: "Send me everything tonight.
All of it.
Don't speak to Diane or Gerald until you hear from me."
He sent everything.
The second day, federal investigators contacted the firm directly.
Patricia handled the call.
Marcus sat in the living room with his laptop open and a cup of coffee growing cold beside him and did not say much.
I made dinner.
He ate half of it.
We went to bed early and lay in the dark and I listened to him breathe in the particular rhythm that meant he wasn't sleeping.
"She was at every birthday," he said, into the ceiling.
"Every Christmas.
She held Vivian at the hospital when we thought Vivian had appendicitis at eight years old and it turned out to be a pulled muscle." He paused.
"Not Vivian.
I mean — I'm going to start calling the baby something else.
That's confusing."
"We haven't agreed on a name," I said.
"I know.
I just — I keep calling her the baby and it feels like she deserves better than that already."
I put my hand over his on the blanket.
He turned his palm up and held on.
"She was my sister," he said.
"She is my sister.
I don't know which tense is right."
"Both, probably," I said.
"For now."
He didn't say anything else.
Eventually his breathing changed and he slept.
On the third day, Patricia called and said that Diane had requested a conversation with Marcus.
One meeting.
Her attorney would be present.
Would Marcus consider it.
Marcus looked at me across the kitchen.
"Your call," I said.
"She asked for you too," Patricia added, from the phone on the counter.
"Both of you.
Together."
I looked at my husband.
He looked at me.
We didn't have a long discussion about it.
Some decisions compress themselves down to the size of a single breath.
"Tell her yes," Marcus said.
"Once.
And only once."
The meeting happened in Patricia's conference room, neutral ground, a long table with water glasses and legal pads that no one used.
Diane came with her attorney, a man I didn't know, who had the quiet wariness of someone who had already told his client not to say certain things and wasn't confident she would listen.
Gerald was not present.
Gerald, we had since learned, had retained his own separate counsel.
Diane sat across from us.
She looked like herself — composed, well-dressed, her posture as upright as ever.
But there were shadows under her eyes that her foundation hadn't quite covered, and she held her water glass without drinking from it for the first ten minutes.
"I want to explain," she said.
"You can speak," Patricia said carefully.
"With the parameters we discussed."
Diane looked at her attorney.
He gave a small nod.
"I didn't know the full scope of what Gerald was doing," she said.
"When I found out—"
"When did you find out?" Marcus said.
A pause.
"Three months before the wedding."
The room absorbed that.
"Three months before the wedding," Marcus repeated.
"And you married him anyway."
"I thought I could manage it.
I thought if I — if the complaint created enough distance from your firm's clean record, the investigation, if one ever came, would stall long enough for Gerald to wind it down."
"You thought you could manage a federal wire fraud scheme," I said.
Diane looked at me.
For the first time since I'd known her, there was nothing in her expression that was designed to diminish me.
She just looked tired.
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like you made a choice," Marcus said.
"Every day for three months, you made a choice."
"Yes." The word landed small and irreversible.
"I did."
Silence.
"The emails," Marcus said.
"The ones to the shell company.
What did they say?"
Her attorney leaned forward.
"We're not—"
"It's fine." Diane put her hand on his arm briefly.
"They said I was aware of the structure.
That I was not an active participant but that I knew." She set down her water glass.
"That's the truthful reading of them.
Whatever a prosecutor does with that — that's separate."
Marcus looked at his sister for a long time.
I watched his face move through things I couldn't fully name — not because he was hiding them, but because some of them didn't have names yet.
"Did you ever like her?" he said finally.
"Vivian.
Was there ever a moment where you actually tried?"
Diane's jaw tightened slightly.
"I thought she was wrong for you."
"That's not what I asked."
A long pause.
"No," Diane said.
Very quietly.
"I suppose I didn't."
Marcus nodded once, slowly.
He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair.
He looked at Patricia.
"We're done."
Patricia gathered her things.
Diane said his name as he stood.
"Marcus."
He stopped.
He didn't turn around immediately.
When he did, there was no heat in his face.
No cruelty either.
Just the specific blankness of someone who has finished grieving something while it was still technically alive.
"Get a good attorney," he said.
"Better than the one you have.
You're going to need it."
He walked out.
I stood up and followed him.
May you like
Behind me, I heard Diane's attorney say something in a low voice.
I didn't hear her respond.
