Chapter 12 #3
“What are you going to do?” the old man asked.
Connor stood up.
“The thing I should have done three years ago,” he said.
* * *
Ira Goldfarb had been Connor’s lawyer for fifteen years. He was sixty-eight years old and had seen everything, and he sat in the chair across from Connor’s desk at four o’clock on Friday afternoon and stared at him as though he’d never seen anything at all.
“Say that again,” Ira said.
“I want to return the controlling stake in Hadley’s,” Connor said, “to the Hadley family trust.”
“Return it.”
“At the price I paid three years ago. Not a dollar more. The trust can pay it back over twenty years, with no interest. Or never. I don’t care.”
Ira took off his glasses. “Connor. That stake is worth three times what you paid. Hadley’s had its best year in a decade last year, because of your wife.
You’d be walking away from—” he named a number.
It was a very big number. “And it’s on the company’s books.
Your board already wants your head on a plate for that statement.
When they hear this, they’ll have a meeting about whether you should still be running this company.
I’m not exaggerating. I’m telling you what will happen. ”
“I know.”
“The business pages will say you’ve lost your mind. That you’re doing it to win your wife back. That it’s a love letter written with the shareholders’ money.”
“I know that too.”
“So why?”
Connor looked out the window. His office was on the top floor, over the river.
It was already getting dark. Across the city, the lights were coming on.
He couldn’t see Walnut Street from here.
He had never been able to. He had chosen this office three years ago, and he had never once thought about the fact that he couldn’t see the store from it.
“Because it was never mine,” he said. “I just paid for it.”
Ira was quiet for a long moment.
“And I’m resigning as chairman of the Hadley’s board,” Connor said. “Effective at the end of the year. I want it all done by the board meeting on the thirtieth.”
Ira put his glasses back on and picked up his pen. He wrote for a while. Then he looked up.
“Who do you want to know about this before it’s done?” he said. “Barry needs to prepare a statement. Your board has to be told. And your wife—”
“Nobody,” Connor said.
“Nobody?”
“Not Barry. Not my board, not until the papers are ready and they can’t stop it. Not Richard.” Connor turned from the window. “And not Caroline.”
“Connor, it’s her family’s store. She’s going to find out.”
“She’ll find out on the thirtieth. Like everybody else.”
“Why not tell her now? It might—” Ira stopped, and chose his words. “It might help.”
“That’s exactly why,” Connor said.
Ira looked at him.
“If I tell her now,” Connor said, “it’s a gift.
It’s me, doing something big, and handing it to her, and waiting to see if it works.
It’s me standing on a stage again.” He shook his head.
“I did that on Monday, Ira. I stood under that clock and I gave the whole city the most private thing we had, because I wanted them to see how sorry I was. I’m not doing that again.
This isn’t for her to see. This is just the thing that’s true.
The store is hers. It was always hers. I’m just going to stop pretending it isn’t. ”
Ira was quiet for a long time. Then he stood up and put his pen in his pocket and picked up his legal pad.
“I’ll have a draft on Monday,” he said.
At the door, he stopped.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, without turning around, “I’ve been doing this for forty years. I’ve never had a client ask me to give away that much money and tell nobody.” He opened the door. “Merry Christmas, Connor.”
* * *
After Ira left, Connor didn’t turn on the lights.
He sat behind his desk in the dark and looked at the city. Snow had started again, just a little, light and slow. The river was black. The bridge was a string of lights. The whole building below him had gone quiet. Everyone had gone home for the weekend. It was the Friday before Christmas.
He took out his phone.
There was nothing from Caroline. There had not been anything from Caroline since the fire escape. He had texted her three times last night. She had not answered. He did not expect her to.
He opened the thread anyway and looked at it.
And he understood that he couldn’t tell her.
He couldn’t tell anyone. He could not call his mother, because she had told him not to call until he’d figured it out, and he had figured it out, but figuring it out was not the same thing as having done it.
He could not call Richard. He could not call Barry. He could not call his board.
He had just done the biggest thing he had ever done in his life, bigger than the store, bigger than the six trucks, and there was nobody on earth he could tell.
He thought that was probably how it was supposed to feel.
He sat in the dark office for a long time, alone, and watched the snow come down over a city he couldn’t see his wife’s store from, and he didn’t send anything to anyone.