“Dana Aragon just called the office,” Marina said. “She’s asking if there’s anything she should know that might affect closing.”
Aspenwood was about to pay me $4.2 million for the company I had built from a card table. They were wiring that money in two weeks. And now the CEO had been nudged by a public post from my son’s mother-in-law suggesting I was the kind of woman who did not handle a bill.
I sat back down. “Get me Dana’s direct line,” I said. “I’ll call her in twenty minutes.”
I went into the powder room and looked at myself. I looked exactly like a woman who had not slept properly in six days.
I put on lipstick. Cabernet Reserve. Forty-two dollars at Nordstrom. I saved it for closings and funerals.
I drank a full glass of water. Then I called Dana Aragon.
I did not mention the wedding. I did not mention Joselyn. I did not mention the $74,000.
I spoke about Maxwell and Lyall’s third-quarter numbers. I spoke about Marina’s retention. I spoke about two new contracts we had quietly signed in September. I spoke for eighteen minutes in the voice of a woman who had been calm during the worst moments of her life because nobody else had been available to be calm.
At the end, Dana said, “Desiree, I’m sorry I even asked.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “You did your job.”
When I hung up, Marina texted almost immediately. Closed her out clean. You’re a witch. I love you.
I laughed for the first time in a week.
Then I remembered Stanford at the rehearsal dinner. “Has your firm ever done business with mine?”
I picked up the phone and called my attorney.
Russell Pike had been my lawyer for nineteen years. He had been Theo’s college roommate at the University of Washington, the best man at our wedding, and the man who read the eulogy at Theo’s funeral. He was six-foot-three, sixty-seven years old, and owned khaki pants and Oxford shirts in three shades of blue.
He called me kid the way an uncle does.
He was, without exaggeration, the reason my children grew up with a father figure who returned phone calls.
When I told him I needed advice on a family financial situation, he said, “Kid, come to my office Monday.”
“Russell, tell me on the phone. I can’t wait until Monday.”
There was a pause. A lawyer pause.
Then he said, “Before I say this, how did the Hartwell family come up?”
“What do you mean, how did they come up?”
“How did Stanford Hartwell’s name come up?”
“Russell. He’s my son’s father-in-law as of last Saturday.”
Another pause.
Then Russell said, “I’m going to read you something. Hang on.”
I heard the click of his keyboard. I heard him stand and sit again.
“November eighth of last year,” he said, “I received a verification call from Hartford Heritage Bank. They were checking a co-signer signature on a commercial loan application for $1.2 million. The applicant was Hartwell Reston Commercial Real Estate. The co-signer listed was you.”
I think I made a sound. It was not a word.
“The signature was not yours,” Russell said. “It was a strong imitation, but it was not yours. I knew because I have your signature on file from decades of documents, and because you would have told me before signing anyone’s commercial paper.”
He told the bank no. He told them to flag the application. Stanford withdrew it within forty-eight hours and apologized, claiming an administrative mistake.
“Russell,” I said.
“I didn’t tell you because I thought it was random identity misuse,” he said. “I had no reason to think that name would ever cross your life.”
“Stanford Hartwell used my name five months before I met him.”
“Yes.”
“Five months before his daughter introduced him to my son.”
“Yes.”
I sat very still.
Here is what I understood in my kitchen, with cold coffee on the counter and Russell’s voice in my ear.
On the Hartwell side, my son’s marriage had been part of something long before he understood it. Stanford had picked me from a list. The loan application was the first attempt to use my name to plug a hole. The wedding was the second attempt.
The daughter was the bridge. The plan came first.
I hung up and walked into the kitchen. I poured myself a glass of water. I drank half and poured the rest into a plant I had not watered in three weeks.
There is probably a metaphor in that. I refused to look at it.
The phone rang again. Bryce.
I let it ring four times because I needed those four rings to remember who I was.
Then I answered.
“Mom, what is going on?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The Hollander estate is calling me three times a day. They’re talking about a payment plan. They said you were the original payer. Mom, did you make this confusing on purpose? Are you doing this to hurt me?”
I closed my eyes. “Bryce, where is Joselyn right now?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Is she in the room?”
“She’s right here.”
“Did Joselyn tell you to ask me that question?”
There was a silence on the other end of that call that I will hear for the rest of my life.
It was the silence of a son realizing his mother had asked the one question he did not have a good answer to.
“Mom,” he said, “I have to go.”
He hung up.
That evening, I drove to Lake Hood at dusk and sat in the car by the seaplane base watching planes come in low over the water. The heat was on. The radio was off. There was a half-empty box of crackers in the passenger seat because I had stopped pretending I was making normal choices.
I ate them straight from the box like a raccoon with good earrings.
Don’t Miss The Rest! Press Next Button Below To Continue Reading.
