Chapter 25
THE SOFT GLOW OF LOWER MANHATTAN’S CITY LIGHTS seeps through the drawn curtains, casting a delicate luminance across the otherwise sterile hotel room.
I stretch and arch away from the unyielding embrace of my hard-backed chair.
My body is exhausted, but my mind hums with a tension that won’t let me sleep.
I pull up another meeting note. Over the past year, Betsey and the rest of the team have been fastidious about keeping their plans and results updated in our contact management system.
In the beginning, I was great about reading them every week.
Every word. We’d meet on Mondays and talk about what was working and how to best explain our brand-new funds to advisors and their offices. The notes were thorough and insightful.
The notes are now a collection of back-of-the-envelope mutterings.
I’m to blame.
No accountability, no quality. I run my hands through my limp hair and then twist it into a messy bun, shoving an old UBS pen through the knot to hold it.
We stopped meeting a few months ago, but not all at once.
I check the calendar. First it was Dave’s sales meeting.
We’d warranted an invite, probably at Phil’s insistence.
After that, two weeks later, a holiday. Then over the next six weeks, we only met twice.
Then the final nail in the meeting coffin had been a rescheduling to Wednesday that had somehow cancelled our recurring reminder, and I’d never put it back.
That was two months ago. It wasn’t like I didn’t see these people all the time, but the routine of reporting and meeting had provided a rudder, keeping everyone tacking into the wind.
Had losing that been my fatal mistake with Betsey?
Over the past six weeks, Betsey’s notes have become sporadic at best. Definitely distracted.
But our sales only rose. It was easy for me to find other areas to apply the gas.
Whatever she was doing had been hidden in the success.
I’d even stopped checking in with her on travel plans, hence the unexpected trips to both Aarav’s and Hal’s offices.
None of the other sales guys had spoken up, but if I surveyed all Dave’s external wholesalers, I bet I’d find others who’d been surprised by her appearance.
I search for Hal’s office on Betsey’s calendar and see two visits back in the early months of our field visits.
Nothing recent. But she must have submitted an expense reimbursement.
In order to get your costs covered, the meeting must be logged in your calendar.
I shift again in my seat. I wish I’d gotten the date of the visit from the guys at the town hall.
Betsey probably visited a nearby office and tacked this one on.
I could search, but without notes, I’m not sure of the point.
A sharp knock makes me jump in my seat. It’s ten minutes before two in the morning. Only one person could be here. Please let it be him, with an overnight bag and ready smile. I fly up from my chair as someone pounds on the locked door.
Then I freeze.
A manila envelope peeks from under the jamb.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry to disturb. The woman said it was a family emergency.” His muffled voice continues to apologize as more of the envelope slithers into my room. As if it might strike, I move no closer. I have to tell Hardwin and then the police.
“Ma’am?” his voice pleads. “Your phone line is on do not disturb, but she said it was an emergency. Something about your husband? If there is any help you need . . .”
She must have paid him handsomely to deliver this to my door in the middle of the night.
I suppose I’m thankful he didn’t tell her my room number.
I should have reported her at the train station.
What if she’s not working alone? I do have Hardwin’s serviceable restraining order, which has remained untouched.
My breath sticks in my throat. I’m playing right into her hands by living in fear.
Striding to the door, I snatch the envelope from the carpet and then bang once on the still-locked door. “You can go now. No more deliveries.”
I don’t consider my options. I pinch the clasp of the envelope and glare into the yawning opening. Inside is a single item that looks like another picture. I slide it out.
This one leaves no doubt.
Lucas and I sit at the booth in the Rotterdam Room.
His arm drapes the back of the corner booth.
My hand grasps the stem of my wineglass while my face tilts toward him.
My cheeks are flushed, and my mouth is slightly open as if I’ve been caught midlaugh.
Lucas is looking toward the ceiling, a huge grin on his handsome face.
A sticky heat crawls up my back. I remember this moment.
As my hand trembles, the picture begins to blur.
This had to be our third time together. He’d been letting me understand him and had just finished telling me a story about a time when his little brother punched him in the face.
When Lucas was in middle school, his mom would blow a whistle on summer nights when it was time to come home.
His younger brother was still in grade school, so his whistle came much earlier.
One night, the neighborhood kids planned to play manhunt.
He explained the game was like hide and seek in reverse: each person who is found joins the seekers.
This had been Lucas’s favorite game. But the previous week, he’d gotten in trouble for moving some boards under a neighbor’s shed to find the perfect hiding spot.
So, before they started the game, they’d reassessed the boundaries based on who was playing and whose mom would kill them if they traipsed through a flower bed or woke a baby.
Just as they chose the seeker, the first whistle blew.
Lucas hadn’t noticed his little brother was even in the group of kids waiting to play until his head recoiled and he heard the slam of skin against skin.
Pain exploded under his eye. Through wet eyes, he saw someone hopping and howling like their spaniel after the trash truck.
Lucas was ready to punch back until laughter overtook him.
His scrawny little brother had injured his knuckles on Lucas’s face.
All the little guy had wanted to do was play the game, and his older brother, his rock star, had taken too long organizing it.
At first it seemed a bitter story to me, and I told Lucas so. But Lucas chuckled and said, “I love the memory because I saw the kind of man my brother would be.”
“Violent?” I asked.
“No. No. Passionate and brave. He’d learn to control the impulse, but he’d been a tagalong before then. That night, I saw him as someone I wanted to stay out with me until the second whistle.” Lucas was almost snorting with laughter at this point.
“Because he punched you in the face?” I started to laugh because I couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, because he stood up to the absurd. We were a bunch of ninnies wagging on about rules and not playing.” Lucas threw back his head, and it must have been at this point that the picture was taken.
I flick the snapshot over. Scrawled in blue ink are the words You have until Friday.
Shaking my head, I speak to the silent room, “Oh, Betsey, you don’t even know who you’re threatening with these pictures.”