Chapter 8: Paper Trail
By midnight, the dinner table had become something else entirely.
Donna's legal pad had four pages of notes.
Empty wine glasses had been pushed to one end.
The roast beef was in the kitchen.
The chocolate cake was half gone — Noah had cut himself a slice somewhere around eleven, and I didn't stop him.
Ethan had given us two account numbers, one routing number, and the name of a small private bank in Connecticut neither Donna nor I had heard of.
He'd done it slowly, the way a person gives up something they hoped not to give up, each piece released only when the alternative became worse than the release.
But he'd done it.
David had stayed.
I hadn't asked him to, and I hadn't asked him to leave, and somewhere around eleven-thirty he'd made a pot of coffee and set mugs on the table without announcing it, and I thought: this man has been lied to too, and he is filling coffee cups because it is the only useful thing available to him, and I understood that completely.
Vanessa had barely spoken in the last two hours.
She sat with both hands around her mug and listened.
Once, when Ethan said something that contradicted what he'd told her a year ago, she made a short, humorless sound.
That was all.
At twelve-fifteen, Donna capped her pen.
"This is enough to work with tonight," she said.
"We'll need a forensic accountant to go through the secondary accounts properly.
I have someone I trust.
I'll call her tomorrow."
Ethan looked up.
"You're bringing in a forensic accountant."
"Your wife is potentially a co-signatory on a guaranteed loan she didn't know existed," Donna said.
"Yes.
We're bringing in a forensic accountant."
"Claire." His voice dropped.
"Can we please — I'd like to speak to you.
Alone."
Donna looked at me.
I thought about it.
"Give us the room," I said.
Donna took her legal pad.
David stood, touched Vanessa's arm, and she rose.
Noah unfolded from his chair near the window, where he'd been sitting for the last hour, and followed them into the kitchen.
Ethan and I were alone at the table.
He looked like someone who had not slept in a long time and had finally stopped pretending otherwise.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I let that sit for a moment.
"Which part are you sorry about?"
He rubbed his face.
"All of it."
"That's not an answer."
"Claire—"
"Tell me one specific thing you are sorry for.
Not all of it.
One."
He looked at the table.
His hands were clasped in front of him.
I noticed his wedding ring — still on.
I noticed mine was still on too.
I hadn't taken it off.
I wasn't sure what that meant yet.
"I'm sorry I let it get this far," he said.
"I kept thinking I could fix it before you found out.
And then it kept getting worse instead of better and I didn't know how to come back from it."
"You could have told me."
"I know."
"When the Hargrove deal collapsed.
You could have said: I have a problem and I need help and I didn't want you to think I failed."
He was quiet for a moment.
"You're right."
"I know I'm right." I moved my mug slightly to one side.
"That's not the question.
The question is why you didn't.
And I think the answer is that telling me would have required treating me like a partner, and somewhere along the way you stopped doing that."
His eyes came up.
"I thought I was protecting you," he said.
"You were protecting your image," I said.
"There's a difference."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"What happens now?" he said.
"I don't know yet." I stood up.
"Donna is going to go through the accounts.
If the liability is what you said, we'll figure out what that means for me legally.
If there's more you haven't told us, that changes things."
"There's nothing more."
I looked at him.
"Ethan.
If there is something more, and the accountant finds it, and I hear it from her instead of from you—" I paused.
"That's the version I won't come back from."
He held my gaze.
"There's nothing more," he said again.
I picked up the legal pad Donna had left on the table — she had a copy.
I carried it toward the kitchen.
"Get some sleep," I said.
"Tomorrow is going to be a long day."
I pushed through the kitchen door.
Donna was at the counter.
David was standing by the window.
Vanessa was seated at the kitchen island.
And Noah was standing at the sink, washing the dinner dishes.
Quietly.
Without being asked.
I set the legal pad on the counter and stood beside him.
He handed me a dish towel.
I dried.
We didn't say anything for a while.
Then Noah said, "Is it going to be okay?"
I thought about the account numbers.
The legal pad.
The name Rachel.
The personal guarantee I hadn't known about.
The months of it.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I'm not standing still anymore.
That's something."
He nodded.
He handed me another dish.
Outside the kitchen window, the street was dark and quiet.
May you like
Nobody was moving out there.
In here, we were.
