Serena's POV
Dominic doesn't say a word for eleven minutes.
I count them by the kitchen clock, a tin sunflower with a drooping hand. He sits at Hazel's oak table with the ledger open under his palms, turning pages. His face is quite blank. Only his thumb moves, back and forth, over a line of black ink, as if he were trying to rub it out.
I don't touch him.
I've learned this about him. There are two kinds of silence. One is a wall. The other is a door he hasn't finished opening.
This is the second.
"He came to us in the April," says Hazel.
Her voice is dry and clear, with a faint Maine twang under it, and she is looking at the wall, not at him. She's wrapped in a blanket, in her own armchair, with her tea going cold.
"Walter had been unhappy for months. He couldn't sleep. He'd sit in the kitchen with his hands over his face. I'd say, Walter, what is it? And he'd say, Hazel, the numbers don't add."
I take a slow breath.
"There was a hole," says Hazel. "Not a big one at first. Four million. Then ten. Then thirty. Money going out of the Ironbridge trust into accounts nobody could name. He thought it was a clerical error. He thought it was a joke. Then he found a signature he didn't recognise on a transfer order."
"Whose?" says Dominic, without looking up.
"Not yours, dear." She smiles, faintly. "Not your father's. It had a different shape. A tight, neat A. A long B."
I feel my heart give a heavy knock.
"Walter didn't know who. He went to his employer. To the man he trusted most." She lifts her eyes. "To Charles."
Dominic's thumb stops.
"He brought it to him in May. Over dinner. At Windward. Your father listened to every word, Walter said. He looked at the numbers for three hours. And at the end, he took off his glasses and said, Walter, I think I know who it is."
"Augustus," I say.
"He didn't say. He wouldn't. He said, Give me time. He's my oldest friend." Hazel sighs. "He wasn't a coward, Dominic. I want you to hear me. He was a man who couldn't believe it. He said, I'll do it properly. I'll get proof. I'll make him confess. I'll make him give it back."
"And the ledger?"
"He made a copy. Of everything. In his own hand." She nods at the book. "He was terribly afraid someone would steal the original. So he sat in the study for six weeks, with a lamp and a pen, and wrote it all out. His notes. His questions. His suspicions."
I look at the margin.
Why this account? Who authorised? A.B.?
"Walter brought it to me in July," says Hazel. "For safekeeping. He said, Hazel, if anything happens, give it to Charles's boy. He said, Not until he's ready."
"Ready?"
Dominic's mouth works.
"And then Walter died."
"Eleven days later."
I close my eyes.
God forgive me.
I see it now, the date in the corner of the page.
"Why didn't he?"
"He said, Hazel, I thought I had time."
The kitchen goes still.
I hear a gasp, a tiny, broken sound, and realise it's mine.
I thought I had time.
I look at my husband.
He's not crying.
He's sitting perfectly upright with his hand on the page and his eyes on a point somewhere over Hazel's shoulder, and his face has gone old.
"He knew," says Dominic, quietly.
"Yes, dear."
"For twelve years. Six of them while I sat beside him at dinner. He knew, and he never said."
"He tried to say," says Hazel. "On his deathbed, I believe. But they gave him morphine."
"He left a letter."
"Did he?"
"In his desk. An envelope. I never opened it." His voice is perfectly level. "I thought it was a note about the will."
"Open it," says Hazel.
"I'm afraid."
"Of course you are."
"I don't know who I'll be after."
"You'll be his son." She reaches out a thin, speckled hand, and covers his. "He wasn't a good man in every way, Dominic. He was proud, and stubborn, and he loved a bet. But he loved you. And he was ashamed. And in the end, that's the thing that made him write it all down."
Dominic puts his head in his hands.
I get up.
I go round the table, and I stand behind his chair, and I put both arms round his shoulders and rest my cheek on top of his head.
I don't say anything.
He leans back against me.
***
Torres arrives at two in a black sedan with two investigators and a face like a closed door.
"It's good," she says at last.
"Good?" says Dominic.
"It's very good. It isn't enough." She takes off her glasses. "I can open a grand jury. I can subpoena Vance's trust, Brandt's accounts, every record at Marlin Capital. I can arrest Drummond for assault, and I will. But you're asking me to charge a seventy-year-old chairman, a pillar of the community, on the strength of a notebook, a dead man's voicemail, and a ledger written by your own father. A defence lawyer will say you forged it to take control of the company."
"Give me seventy-two hours." She puts the glasses back on. "Go home. Don't talk to anyone. Don't confront anyone. Don't breathe on anyone. I'll have subpoenas by Thursday."
"And Drummond?"
"Drummond's going to be very uncomfortable in federal custody." A thin smile. "I have a feeling he's a man who'd rather talk than sit."
She goes.
Hazel goes with her, in the back of the second car, clutching a knitted bag and a ginger cat, under the protection of two armed investigators. She turns at the gate and lifts one small, wrinkled hand.
"Look after each other," she says.
I watch the car until it's gone.
***
We take a room at the Press Hotel in the Old Port, in the name of a man named Walter Peppermint.
It was Dominic's idea.
I laughed so hard I had to sit on the stairs.
The room is on the fourth floor, with a window over the harbour and a bed the size of a small country. A gas fire. A basket of clementines. Someone has left a card on the pillow. Welcome to Portland.
I stand at the window. The harbour is lit up, boats at their moorings, and somewhere beyond the islands a lighthouse sweeps.
"Serena."
I turn.
He's standing by the bed with his jacket in his hand. There's a bruise forming along his jaw. He's holding himself as if his ribs were made of glass. He has never looked so tired, or so beautiful.
"I'd like to say something," he says.
"All right."
"And you can tell me to stop."
"I won't."
"I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm only asking..." He swallows. "To be allowed to be here."
I look at him.
I cross the carpet.
I put my hand against his cheek.
"I'm not ready to be your wife," I say.
"I know."
"I don't know how long it'll take. I don't know who I am yet."
"I'll wait."
"But I'm ready to be here."
His eyes close.
I stand on my toes.
I kiss him, very softly, on the corner of his mouth, and again, on the bruise, and then on the mouth, and the whole long cold year seems to melt, like snow in a warm room.
It's slow.
It's a question, and an answer, and a promise made in the dark.
I don't know how long we stand there.
I know that the fire pops, and the clementines glow, and his heart is beating under my palm like something that's been kept in a box for three years and finally let out.
I know that when he lifts me in his arms, very carefully, because of his ribs, I say, Be careful, and he laughs against my throat.
The phone on the nightstand starts to ring.
It's a cheap, disposable thing Dominic bought at a gas station. Only three people have the number.
He answers on the second ring.
I watch the colour leave his face.
"What?" he says. "When?"
A pause.
"Marcus. When?"
I sit up.
He puts the phone down very slowly on the sheet.
"It's Caleb," says Dominic.
"What about him?"
"They've arrested him."