“Thank you.” I tuck in behind my computer screen.
The cart whooshes across my carpet with a slight hitch in the wheels and then stops.
“Not my business...”
My head pops back around the screen.
“Maybe go home.” The woman sucks in her full top lip. Her face is devoid of makeup, and her hair is scraped back into a long thin ponytail. “Maybe they take enough.”
My eyes flick to the clock on my computer, five minutes after ten. I didn’t make it home. I nod and try to smile at the kind woman, who probably knows way more about me than I realize. My hand flattens against my face. I shove my laptop into my bag for the dozenth time today and then turn to my phone. I’m calling the car service. The train schedules at night are sketchy at best.
The ringing of my desktop phone startles me.
“So, you are still there?” Clint’s voice, wrapped in a heavy sigh, expels out of my speaker.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy night. I—”
“I knew inviting you home would have the opposite effect.”
I watch the little hairs on my left forearm rise. The warmth of the room has evaporated. I am so tired of being manipulated by the people closest to me. I’ve made it too easy. I’m a target with multiple bull’s-eyes. He invited me back into my own home and I let him. No,worse than that. I asked to be invited back. And on top of isolation, he’s shaming me with the prediction I would let him down.
I grab my suit jacket from my chair and punch my arm through one of the sleeves. “You’re right. It must have been your invitation that skewered me to my office chair dealing with stressors I shield you and everyone else from.”
“Meredith, I’ve never asked you to be some sort of superhero. In fact, the opposite—I asked you to share your life.”
I lean over and talk directly into the phone’s speaker. “You have no idea what you ask of me.”
“Yeah, my mistake. My mistake to think that on a day like this my wife would want to be home with her family.” The line clicks off.
Anger rages inside me.
I immediately press the line and dial the number I know by heart. “I need a car to the Midtown Hilton.”
25
THE SOFT GLOW OF LOWER MANHATTAN’S CITY LIGHTSseeps 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 penthrough 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...”
