Chapter 7
Bonnie was halfway across her own backyard when the effects of the three glasses of wine caught up to her. She stumbled slightly but knew the darkness was enough to hide the wobble from Jack if he was still on his deck. She didn’t turn around to look. Instead, she hurried up her steps—clutching the handrail in one hand—and slipped through the back door quickly.
As soon as she was in her living room, all her energy dropped out of her body. It was fast, like someone had pulled the plug on the tank and it had all drained away in seconds. She eased herself onto the couch and kicked off her shoes. It was probably a drop in adrenaline after her swift exit and Jack’s bizarre evasion of her last question.
She lay back against a particularly fluffy throw pillow and let her eyes drift shut. Maybe she was overthinking things. It was possible her question had been dumb, and that was why he hadn’t answered. After all, she didn’t have the faintest clue what half the things he’d said meant. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that her question was so absurd it made Jack think she was too drunk.
Then again, she was fairly tipsy. Once her eyes were shut, it was impossible to ignore the pull of sleep, so she gave in. With the way her life was going, she wasn’t in a position to give up a solid night’s sleep when she could get one. Secure in the knowledge that her problems would keep for a few hours, she fell fast asleep in the middle of the living room.
It was still dark when Bonnie woke up. She was groggy, and part of her wanted to sink right back into the couch cushions and keep sleeping, but she was too thirsty. With a groan, she swung her legs off the couch and sat up, rubbing her eyes. The clock on the mantlepiece read just after two in the morning. She was relieved. After a little water and a trip to the bathroom, she hoped she could sleep through the rest of the night.
But once she was in the kitchen with a cold glass of water in her hand, she knew that wouldn’t happen. The act of walking was enough to wake her up the rest of the way, so she downed the first glass and refilled it, then took the water to Peter’s study. Since she was up, she might as well figure out what on Earth a private equity fund was. Until she understood Peter’s business structure better, she’d continue running into embarrassing obstacles.
A ton of information came up on her first search. Within the first hour, she learned that private equity funds were related to the stock market. The contours of the business model seemed familiar. Clients would pool their money with a single manager—Peter, in this case—and the manager was responsible for investing the money in long-term, high-earning investments.
It seemed simple enough to understand. Bonnie knew there were intricacies involved in what investments to make and when to make them, but she felt more comfortable figuring that out now that she had a basic understanding of what was supposed to happen in a private fund.
Armed with this knowledge, she dug deeper.
She looked up finance newsletters and blog posts and sorted through newspaper articles from all over the Eastern Seaboard. In all of this searching, she had one goal in mind: find out as much about Peter’s specific fund as possible. Most of the mentions weren’t informative. Plenty of publications included it in their lists of successful investments of the last twenty-five years or so. Bonnie already knew that, though; their lifestyle proved his business had been successful for a long time. So far, she hadn’t found anything that even hinted at the dramatic change in their fortunes.
Two hours in, she found a treasure trove of articles from about ten years ago. There had been a milestone in the fund—Mike and Peter had been working together for a long time by then, and it had matured. That meant, Bonnie knew now, that all those clients who’d entrusted their money to her husband had gotten massive returns. Everyone had made a lot of money, including Peter and Mike.
Article after article was full of nothing but praise. Finance writers were lauding Mike and Peter as the gold standard of private equity: smart, aggressive investments and laser-focused management that squeezed as much out of every dollar as possible. Bonnie’s heart swelled with pride as she scanned through the columns. It was clear that Peter hadn’t overstated his success. His industry peers certainly agreed that he was the best of the best, alongside Mike.
But as proud as she felt, every time her eyes coasted over Mike’s name, there was a pinch in her stomach. Bonnie couldn’t understand how he could have messed up something that was, by all accounts, going so well. She worried that Mike’s greed had gotten in the way of his reasoning, and that was what had led to the company’s current state of bankruptcy and ruin. She couldn’t comprehend how else all of this money could disappear so quickly.
The only thing that gave Bonnie hope was that there weren’t any articles detailing the downfall of the Wilkins fund. Not a single paper had printed a retraction, and there wasn’t so much as one angry blog post. Whatever Mike had done—and Bonnie was fully convinced now that he was behind her current problems—it hadn’t hit the press. She hoped that her family was the only one bearing the consequences; she didn’t like thinking about all those people who’d trusted her husband with their life savings having the rug pulled out from under them this way. She wouldn’t wish her current situation on anyone, let alone on all of the people who had made her husband’s success possible with their investments.
By four in the morning, Bonnie’s head spun from all the reading and research she’d done. She was almost tired again, but sitting still wasn’t helping. The den suddenly felt too stuffy, too closed off from the rest of the house, so she headed back to the living room. That wasn’t enough space either, though, so she slipped onto the back deck for some fresh air.
It was still a few hours to sunrise, so she stood at the railing and took deep breaths, pulling fresh air inside her lungs and exhaling all of her anxiety about Mike’s betrayal. It helped quiet her mind, all those words she’d read untangling in her brain and spooling themselves into neat piles of information. The spinning, angry feeling she got when she thought about Mike started to dim the longer she stood on the porch.
Then she heard it—the sound that had caught her attention just before the storm the night before. The cat was back. The meow was so distinct, so clear amongst the crickets chirping and the whistle of the wind in the trees. She knew it was real, not a figment of her imagination.
She strained to see in the dark, peering over the railing for any sign of movement. There, in the moonlit grass was the chubby cat she’d spotted before. She smiled when she saw it, relieved that she hadn’t hallucinated the pet or, worse, mistaken a small coyote for a rotund house cat.
“Hi, kitty,” she cooed quietly. “I hope you enjoyed your tuna.”
At the mention of tuna, as though the feline could understand language, it bolted for the stairs. Panicked, Bonnie raced to the door to slide it shut; she had no problems interacting with the cat out in the yard, but she didn’t want to bring a feral animal into her house. As cute as the furry thing was, she had no idea where it had been. For all she knew, it had fleas or ticks, and letting it in the house would be a ticket straight to Lyme disease.
But it was too late. Despite its large, wobbly belly, it was fast. It was inside the living room before she could get the door slid even halfway shut. Bonnie had to jerk the door back open so she could head inside herself, in a second vain attempt to prevent muddy paw prints from getting everywhere.
She closed the door and sighed. There were a few dirt smudges across the floor, leading in a clear path to the couch. The black-and-white ball of fur was perched on the center cushion, looking at Bonnie curiously. The moment their eyes met, the cat blinked slowly and purred. Every last thought about furniture upholstery cleaner and mop buckets had vanished.
It was silly, but Bonnie swore it was a kindred spirit. The moment they looked at each other, she felt a connection with the poor creature. Its fur was sprinkled with dirt and a few twigs, the white spots almost gray with grime. The black spots hid the dirt better, but the cat was rumpled all over. However, this muddied, bedraggled animal wasn’t beaten down. Bonnie swore she could see hope on its face as it purred at her from across the living room.
With another sigh, she walked down the hall to the linen cupboard to get a towel. She could scrub the floors and worry about the couch cushions in the morning; all the furniture in the lake house was made to be cleaned with ease. She’d bought it all when the kids were young and constantly tracked mud through the house after afternoons on the water. It would all be fine. So she focused on cleaning her furry guest instead.
The cat wasn’t very enthusiastic about the towel. Bonnie was able to rub most of the dirt off its back, but the rest of it was still a little muddy. As she tried to dry off its legs and tail, she confirmed it was a female. The cat was even more reluctant to let Bonnie clean off her face and ears, but Bonnie managed to get all the twigs out of her fur. When she cried mournfully, Bonnie laughed and put the towel aside.
“All right, all right. I’ll leave you alone. But sooner or later we’re going to have to get you clean,” Bonnie said with a giggle.
She sat on the couch next to furball and held out her fingers. It eagerly sniffed her hand, and then, to Bonnie’s delighted surprise, crawled into her lap.
“Oh, hello!” she cooed. “You’re awfully friendly. Too friendly to be feral, I think. Can I pet you, sweet girl?”
The cat bumped her head against Bonnie’s hand, making her laugh again. She stroked her head, then her back, relishing in the soothing purrs. After a few minutes, the cat started grooming herself, starting with her face and working her way backward toward her tail.
“There you go. You clean what you can, and we’ll sort the rest out tomorrow. Or later today, I suppose. It’s quite early in the morning. Goodness, I must be tired. Talking to the cat like this, alone in the dark. What do you think, kitty? Am I getting loopy?”
Her new house pet ignored her rambling and focused on her grooming session, but Bonnie noticed she was still purring. She didn’t mind if Bonnie was loopy or not; she was just happy to have shelter and a warm lap. Bonnie was pleased that was enough. Finally, this was something she knew how to do. Taking care of another was second nature to her, whether it was her children, her late husband, or a stray animal.
Comforted by that thought, Bonnie finally closed her eyes again and drifted back to sleep, her hand resting on the cat’s soft fur.