Chapter 39: Brick by Brick
I did not invite him in. I stood at the bottom of my own steps with my keys in my hand, and I waited.
He looked worse up close. Nothing was agreeing with him.
He had Vera's eyes when he was tired. I had spent fifteen years not saying that out loud.
I will sign it, he said. That is why I came.
Whatever your lawyers put in front of me. I will sign tomorrow.
You were going to have to, I said. The court already decided.
I know. I am not here to fight.
Then what is left.
He laughed once, without humor. You always did get to the point faster than Paula. She bills me for it. You do it free.
He rubbed his face with both hands, and I saw my fifteen years in that gesture.
The review, he said. The fraud review at the firm. You know about it.
I know about it.
It is going to end me, Nora. Fired for cause. No partner comes back from that.
No firm in this state will touch me.
Vera wants me out by the first, he said. My own mother itemizes my groceries.
Do you know what that is like?
Yes, I said. It is like being married to you, with receipts.
I said nothing. He crushed the top of the liquor-store bag and kept talking.
One call, he said. That is all I am asking.
You are the trust. You are their biggest client.
You call Martin and say you want it closed, and it closes.
Fifteen years of my labor had been invisible to him. One signature of mine was suddenly his last solid ground.
You want me to save your job.
I want you to save my life, he said, and his voice broke on the word, and I watched myself not move.
Because here is the thing about fifteen years. Some part of you is always standing ready to fix his emergencies.
I had to hold that part of me down, like a dog that does not know it has been sold.
I had loved this man, or loved the project of him, and projects die hard. Part of me still wanted to hand him a towel and a plan.
I did not put the receipts in Sabrina's phone, I said. I did not put the firm's billing codes on your hotel bills. I did not order the review.
You can stop it.
No, I said. I cannot. It is the firm's review.
Their money, their rules, their committee. You know that.
You came here because I am the only person left who might still flinch for you.
His face changed then. Not anger. Something older, and more tired.
She ruined me, he said. Sabrina. Three years, and she kept every receipt. She ruined me.
I looked at him for a long moment.
No, Grant.
He waited.
Sabrina did not ruin you. I did not ruin you. The court did not ruin you.
I stepped past him onto the first stair, so that he had to look up at me for once.
You built this, I said. Brick by brick, out of lies and other people's money and other people's patience.
You just never thought anyone would check the foundation.
I did not check it either, he said, looking past me. I never once read what I was signing. You know that. You watched me not read it for fifteen years.
I know, I said. That was the first brick.
I put my key in the lock.
Sign the papers, I said. It will be the first honest thing you have done in years.
I closed the door without slamming it.
Through the glass I watched him sit back down on my steps in the dark, a man waiting for a house to change its mind.
Houses do not change their minds.
That is what people love about them.