All Chapters of THE RELUCTANT MRS. ROWE: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

BeckettHe moved that evening.I should have anticipated it. I did anticipate it. I had told Marcus two weeks ago that a man like Strand would not go quietly. That suspension from the firm was not the same as being finished. That he still had cards and he would play them because men like Strand played every card they had right up until the moment the deck was empty.What I had not anticipated was which card.Marcus sent me the link at seven PM.A longer piece this time. Not the financial news site. A proper publication. The kind with enough credibility that being featured in it meant something.The headline was not about conflict of interest.It was about Daniel.Specifically it was a profile of the collapse of Daniel's company five years ago. Framed as a cautionary tale about nepotism in private equity. About a CEO who had used family connections to protect a failing business and whose judgment had cost investors significantly.None of it was true.All of it was documented with enoug

SloaneMy father called on a Thursday morning.I almost did not answer.Not because I was afraid of what he would say. I was past afraid of Gerald Mercer. What he could do to me emotionally had a ceiling now that I understood the full shape of him. You cannot be devastated by someone you have already seen completely.I answered because not answering felt like unfinished business and I was tired of unfinished business."Sloane," he said."Gerald," I said.A pause."I have been contacted by the criminal attorney," he said. "The one handling the case against Strand."I sat up straighter."When," I said."Yesterday. They want me to testify." Another pause. "I wanted to call you before I decided."I sat with that for a moment.He was calling me before he decided.That was new."What did you tell them," I said."That I needed to think about it." His voice was quieter than usual. The Gerald voice I had not heard before. Not the performing voice or the apologetic voice or the justifying voice

SloaneThe bar association formally dismissed the complaint on a Monday.I got the letter at my office. Opened it at my desk. Read it twice. Put it in my drawer.Then I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling for a long moment.Done.All of it done.Strand suspended. Arrested. The criminal case proceeding. Hargrove gone from the board. The ethics complaint dismissed. The bar complaint dismissed. The press article answered so thoroughly by the piece I had written that the original had been quietly taken down by the publication two days after.Done.I should have felt something larger than what I was feeling.What I was feeling was quiet.Just very quiet.Like after a long storm when the sound stops and you stand in the stillness and your ears keep waiting for the next thing that does not come.Dara appeared in my doorway at eleven.She had the expression she got when she had something to say and had been waiting for the right moment.She came in. Closed the door. Sat down."I wa

BeckettI woke up at two in the morning.Not unusual. I had been waking at two in the morning for five years. My body had decided somewhere in the grief of losing Daniel that two AM was when the thinking happened whether I wanted it to or not.What was unusual was what I woke up to.She was not beside me.I lay there for a moment registering that. Then I got up.She was on the porch.I could see her through the glass. Standing at the railing in the dark with a blanket around her shoulders looking at the water. The ocean at night was black and moving and the moon was doing something complicated with the surface of it that made the whole thing look like something that had existed before people and would exist after them.I got the other blanket from the couch.Went outside.She heard the door and turned slightly but did not look surprised.I stood beside her at the railing and put the blanket around my own shoulders and looked at the water."You could not sleep," I said."I sleep differ

BeckettThe last morning in Maine arrived the way last mornings always do.Too fast and with a particular quality of light that seemed to know it was the last one and was doing something extra with itself because of that. I noticed it before she was awake. Standing at the kitchen window with my coffee watching the ocean do what the ocean did which was continue regardless of whether anyone was watching or what they were feeling about leaving.We had been here six days.Six days of nothing that had turned out to be everything.We had found Daniel's rock every morning. We had cooked in the kitchen that faced the ocean and eaten at the table and talked for hours about things that had nothing to do with Strand or the firm or anything that had been pressing on us for months. We had walked the cliff path in all weather including one afternoon when the rain came in sideways off the water and we had kept walking anyway because turning back felt wrong and because Sloane had looked at me when th