Chapter 7: Ten Minutes
Grace and I waited in the hallway outside the conference room.
She stood with her back to the wall and her briefcase at her feet and she looked completely unremarkable — like someone waiting for a bus.
I had no idea how she did it.
"What are they doing in there?" I said.
"Recalculating," she said.
"Pritchard is good.
He already knew about the transaction pattern.
He was hoping we didn't."
"And now that we do?"
"Now the NDA isn't about protecting their reputation.
It's about keeping a federal matter quiet." She looked at me.
"Which means they need it more than they're letting on.
And that means we have more leverage than we walked in with."
"Is that good?"
"It's useful," she said.
"Whether it's good depends on what they offer next."
The door opened.
Pritchard stood in the frame.
"My client would like to speak with his daughter-in-law.
Privately."
"No," Grace said.
"It's a personal matter.
Family."
"She's not his family," Grace said.
"She's my client."
Pritchard looked at me.
"Five minutes.
No attorneys."
I looked at Grace.
She gave me the smallest shake of her head.
"No," I said.
Something moved across Pritchard's face — not surprise, exactly.
More like a door closing on a room he'd expected to walk into.
"Then my client has a counter-proposal," he said.
"Full restitution.
Return of all funds.
Signed letter of non-involvement.
No NDA."
I waited.
"In exchange," he said, "for a private agreement that you will not initiate contact with the two prior women or encourage any third party to do so."
The hallway was quiet.
"He's not asking you to stay silent," Grace said, reading it carefully.
"He's asking you not to go looking for them."
"What if they come looking for me?" I said.
Pritchard's pause was a fraction too long.
"That would be outside the scope of the agreement."
I understood then.
He didn't know where they were either.
Or he did, and he was afraid they already knew about me.
"I need an hour," I said.
Pritchard nodded and went back inside.
Grace and I walked to the end of the hallway.
She spoke quietly.
"This is a real offer," she said.
"The money is real.
The letter is real.
And the restriction is narrow enough that a good argument could be made it's unenforceable anyway."
"But?"
"But you told me last night you didn't want to take a price that lets them do it to someone else."
"Yes."
"This offer doesn't stop them.
It just stops you from actively helping anyone else stop them." She looked at me steadily.
"That's a different thing.
You need to decide if it's a difference you can live with."
I stood at the window at the end of that hallway.
The street below was ordinary — a dry cleaner, a pharmacy, a woman pushing a stroller.
Nobody down there knew what was happening in this building.
I thought about the two women I had never met.
I thought about the letter written three weeks before my wedding: *her type never does.*
I thought about my father's voice in every class he ever taught: *nobody gives you this so you can tell the story afterward.*
But I wasn't in his class.
And this wasn't a story I was willing to leave unfinished.
"I need to make one phone call," I said.
Grace nodded and stepped away to give me space.
I called my aunt.
The one at the second table.
The one who worked in lending and had seen my name on a flagged account and hadn't known what to do.
She answered on the second ring.
"The two women before me," I said.
"Do you have any way to find them?"
A pause.
"I might have a name," she said.
"From the account history.
I didn't want to say anything until I knew what you were doing."
"I know what I'm doing," I said.
Another pause.
Then: "Her name is Donna.
She left four years ago.
I have a city but not an address."
"That's enough," I said.
"Don't do anything yet.
Just hold onto it."
I hung up and walked back to Grace.
"I'm not signing the counter-proposal," I said.
"I want the original terms — full restitution, the letter — and I want the clause about the other women removed entirely.
No restriction.
Nothing."
Grace looked at me for a moment.
"They'll say no."
"Then we file Monday," I said.
May you like
She picked up her briefcase.
"Let's go back in," she said.
