Chapter 9 Hailey
Hailey
Something was wrong. September was well underway and yet Mack was not going back to school.
He was thinking of taking the semester off.
His mental health was not good, he’d said, like he was reading a public service announcement.
This thing with his mom was preying on his mind, it was impossible to concentrate, he would be doing his students a disservice.
He felt he needed a leave of absence, and the department had agreed to it.
No one had asked Hailey if she agreed to it.
For three mornings in a row, she watched Mack get the girls up for school.
She said goodbye to him as he made their waffles, watched him through the glass in the front door sip his cheap instant coffee as she dug around the porch for her Prada wedges.
He was crouched over his phone in his sweatpants and his smelly old Duke T-shirt, and he looked sneaky and anxious, Hailey thought, like one of her clients whose explicit texts with his mistress were about to be read out by opposing counsel.
As she was pulling out of the driveway, Mack came sprinting out.
“Babysitter,” he shouted through the closed car window. “Did you call her?”
They went three rounds—again—on why Hailey couldn’t just cancel the babysitter indefinitely, on said babysitter’s contract, and on what would happen when Mack went back to work, because he was going back to work.
Hailey couldn’t help feeling disgusted at his ten-day-old stubble and his glorified pajamas, and she burned with shame when she realized that she wasn’t the only one checking out the state of him: Betsy Wakefield stood on the strip of lawn between their houses as her two beribboned daughters climbed into the back of her Mercedes.
“Morning!” she called out to Mack and Hailey, and Mack replied with the same. “Have a great day at school, girls,” he added, turning back to Hailey.
“You too, Mack!” Betsy shouted back. Though it was impossible, Hailey felt sure from the tone of Betsy’s voice that their neighbor knew just what a freeloader Mack had suddenly become.
How could she not? He was the picture of failure this morning, rumpled and whiskery and sour.
Were there to be no more button-downs with rolled-up sleeves, no more stories about his Gen Z students being offended?
He was really going to stand here and beg for the babysitter’s job?
If Mack didn’t snap out of this, he might never need his sexy reading glasses again, and then Hailey really would leave him.
Already three days had felt an eternity.
She waited until Betsy had driven off down the street.
Her daughters were at the same school as Mabel, though no one had yet broached the subject of a carpool.
It really was a waste of time and gas for both households to drive to the same place every morning, though, so Hailey would have to sort it out when she got a free half minute.
She turned her attention back to Mack. “How long are you thinking this leave of absence is going to last exactly? The whole semester?”
Across the street, Grady and Deborah Sinclair emerged from their house in matching golf attire.
Though they looked way too young for it, Hailey had heard they were retired, and they certainly seemed to do everything together.
They waved a curt good morning in unison.
Neither of them ever smiled; maybe that was what marriage did to you. Especially when you stopped working.
Mack bowed his head and backed away from the car. “Hailey, just . . . please. Just give me some time to deal with everything.”
Even with the sneaky shadow that flashed across his eyes again, even with his vague mutterings and his refusal to give her any concrete details, Hailey was still suddenly overcome with the urge to get out of the car and give him a hug.
He looked so diminished standing there, a little boy who’d lost his father and then his mother and was all alone in the world except for Hailey.
And despite everything he had been through, Mack was never diminished.
He never seemed to find life too much, and he was never too far the other way, either, never inflamed with unrealized ambition.
Mack had always cruised happily through the middle of his existence, and whenever he’d needed to, he’d reached out and pulled Hailey along beside him, away from the spiky ups and downs she was prone to.
His unflappability was like a drug, and Hailey felt its withdrawal acutely.
Which made her even madder. What right did Mack have to choose this moment to finally let something get to him? Something that was his own damn fault? He had sleepwalked right into this situation with his mother, and now he was going to neglect Hailey too?
“As long as they keep paying you, I guess you know what you need,” Hailey called out to him as she rolled her eyes and rolled up the window. The way Mack fled toward the house didn’t exactly fill her with confidence.
* * *
Marla, their rock-star paralegal, jumped on her as soon as she got to the office.
“I tried to call you,” the woman said in a breathless tone Hailey had never heard her use before. “He’s here. I don’t know why he’s here, but he’s here. David Rainier.”
Hailey’s hand shook, and her Starbucks splashed across her dress.
Panic gripped her insides: Had she set up a meeting with David Rainier and forgotten?
Was Rebekah about to descend on them too?
Marla the paralegal would never have allowed such a slipup, and she rushed to reassure Hailey: “There’s nothing in the schedule.
He says he just wants to talk, to meet you. I put him in the big conference room.”
“Okay.” Hailey had kept a freshly dry-cleaned blouse in the cupboard behind her desk ever since the Feldman divorce; Bruce Feldman’s now ex-wife had had a penchant for throwing cups of coffee at him in the heat of the moment, and though it had cost her dearly in the end, more than once Hailey had been caught in the crossfire and had to spend half a day drenched in French roast. Forever after she was prepared, except that today she was wearing a dress and there was no skirt or pair of pants in that closet.
Instead, she attempted some creative folding to hide the stain as she made her way to the conference room, passing the perplexed faces of two senior partners lurking in the hallway.
They’d want a full report; David Rainier and his bill-dodging wife were now the whole firm’s problem.
He was a big problem, too, bigger than she’d pictured—at least six foot four when he stood up to shake her hand, wide shoulders and arms bulging at the sleeves of his crisp white shirt.
She took in his flawless smile, an expensive watch, a gold wedding band, of all things.
Brown eyes framed by a thick head of dark hair.
His LinkedIn photo and the selfies Hailey had seen from the social media research did not do him justice, so even though her brain was already tying itself in knots over all the things he could possibly say to cheat her out of a quarter million, Hailey did not have to force her own smile as she shook his hand: he looked like a worthy opponent.
He did not apologize for coming unannounced, and Hailey had no idea how long he had been waiting for her.
She decided to let him speak first, but Rainier had the same plan; after accepting Marla’s offer of coffee (he took it black), he fixed Hailey with a look that bordered on the intense, and then he waited.
Hailey took the seat on the corner next to him—across the table was too adversarial—and they battled out the silence until Hailey cracked.
“So. Here you are.” She wasn’t about to indulge him with a Thanks for coming in today, or an I hope you weren’t waiting long.
“Yep. Here I am.”
He was good at this; he hadn’t made his millions being an idiot. Two fifty was chump change to him.
Hailey jumped on this thought.
“Did you come to settle your bill in person?” If he laughed, so help her God, she would tear him limb from muscly limb.
He didn’t laugh. He sighed. “No. I came to explain.”
“I’m not sure how that’s going to work, Mr. Rainier. Legally, you owe what you owe—what Rebekah owes—so unless I can convince you two to make good on that, I think it’s probably best if we speak through counsel.”
“Call me David, please. Listen, Hailey, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, This asshole can afford to pay me, he just won’t because he’s an asshole.”
She hadn’t told him to call her Hailey, and wild horses could not have dragged a sound from her at this moment.
They both watched as his phone on the table lit up twice with incoming calls—Ben/Assistant and John McRory/JP Morgan. He ignored both.
“Hear me out,” he said finally. “I just can’t let Rebekah do this. I have to take a moral stand. If I pay you, if I take care of this, Rebekah will expect me to clean up every mess she makes, and our arrangement”—he spat out the word—“won’t work.”
Another incoming call: Glenn Paul/Blackrock. If Hailey had ever doubted this guy was a serious player, she didn’t now.
But he wasn’t going to play her. “So you’re teaching the little wife a lesson? Is that what this is?”
David looked down at his hands in what could have been shame when Hailey spoke; his eyelashes were impossibly long against his cheek.
“Or is it, Mr. Rainier, that you’re going to lure Rebekah back east, get the kids settled and reside in New York City, and then file for divorce there, where there’s no community property?
And then, what with this huge outstanding legal bill in Rebekah’s name making its way through the court system, no decent Manhattan divorce attorney will touch her?
That would be a great plan, if maybe a little obvious. ”
His face gave nothing away. She could see tiny blue specks in his dark eyes as he leaned forward in his chair. “You know, I read your interview in Cleveland Social,” he told her.
“Okay.”
“And I’m not sure what you said is right.”
“Oh?” He had a lot of nerve; she would say that for him.
“You said divorce happens very slowly and then all at once. I don’t think that’s true.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” Hailey told him.
“The author Tom Wolfe did, and I was quoting him. And in my experience that is what happens. Couples pick at each other, little things build, then all of a sudden they’re here in this room.
And then after I clean up their mess, they pay me.
” The Cleveland Social piece had been a puff profile of Hailey the divorce guru and her happy family, concluding with her thoughts on how to avoid needing her services.
“People pay me, and then I feed my kids,” she added, hoping David had seen the family photos the magazine ran, her and Mack with the children in their yard.
He obviously doted on his own kids; maybe she could find a soft spot.
“It wasn’t like that with Rebekah. There was nothing slow about it ever.
” He frowned. “Or maybe the slow part came before we met. She was like a goddamn crocodile, lying in wait for me. We literally laid eyes on each other, and then boom! She was pregnant, we got married, and she turned into a total psychopath. That was all at once. So I guess you are right, in a way.”
“And presumably you were unconscious throughout this entire process?”
“No. I was stupid, I admit it. And distracted. But now the woman has completely abandoned our children, which would be a great thing except they love her. Do you know how heartbreaking that is? She forgets to pick them up from school, lets the nanny raise them when I can’t be there, and they still love her.
And so—completely off the record—I’ve got to find some way to keep her under control, keep everyone happy, keep my children safe. ”
He did sound wounded, but who really knew.
Hailey found herself trying to picture him flirting with Rebekah, asking her out.
Where would they have met? Wherever it was, Hailey’s worst client of all time must have thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
Rebekah had been a restaurant hostess; Rainier had a fifty-foot sailboat and a house in the Caymans.
(Hailey had seen the floor plans of both.)
“If that’s true, I’m sorry for the way things have turned out for your family.
” She meant this, which made what followed work so well: “But if I don’t get paid, I’m not going to be able to keep everyone on my end happy and safe.
You seem like a really nice guy who’s just found himself in a bad situation, so please, make this easy on all of us and do the right thing here. The legally obligated thing.”
He leaned forward in his chair and bit his lower lip. The skin on his face looked impossibly soft for someone so masculine. Hailey was annoyed with herself for noticing it.
“I’ve got to tell you again,” he said finally, “the idea that you extended her credit—well, I hope I’m not being patronizing when I say it’s just bad business.
And all right, you got me. I do like the idea of Rebekah having shit like this hanging over her, of getting her ass dragged through court, even if it means I am too, eventually.
But what you said about your people working for free makes me pissed off for you.
I’m going to see what I can do. Maybe we can come to an arrangement. ”
“I would really, really appreciate that,” Hailey told him, even though she wasn’t sure what exactly it was he needed to see about.
It was pretty simple: he needed to pay her.
But at least this was progress, and this was a marathon, not a sprint.
She would pace herself. “I’m glad you came in, David. Thank you.”
“I wanted to meet you.” As he said this, his phone rang again, and the screen lit up with a photo of a little boy grinning wide enough to show his missing two front teeth.
Hailey wasn’t trying to look, but the name over the picture came up as Doodlebug.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but I have to take this.” He shook her hand.
“I’ll be in touch.” His grip had just the right amount of pressure, and to her surprise, Hailey was sorry when he let go.