It is less that I feel a sudden loyalty to Paul, than that using him as a scapegoat just isn’t fair. Reaching out, I grab Jack’s fingers again, hoping to calm him.
Paul says, “She was in the process of considering various options, when the lawyer for the estate did an accounting.”
“Ronald Doe,” Jack says.
“Yes. He noticed the missing money and asked your mother about it. As executor of the estate, she could explain it away, but the money was still gone. She was terrified that if Doe looked too deeply, she would be charged with embezzlement, in which case she might lose everything. She and I talked about downsizing the company, selling it, even declaring bankruptcy.” He sighs. “Well, I talked about it. She listened, but she kept insisting that if she hung in a little longer, things would improve.” He slips me a look of regret. “When things kept sliding, there was only one person she trusted enough to go to.”
“Tom,” I say. The conversation with my sisters is fresh in my mind. We were speculating, but, setting my own resentment aside, I don’t want our guesses to be true.
Paul says a quiet, “Yes.”
“What did he do?”
Glancing back, he looks at our house. He is thinking that we just buried Tom and that he doesn’t want to be saying this. I’m thinking, for the second time in as many hours, that he can’t stop now.
When he turns back to me, he is resigned. “He taught her how she could cover up what she’d done.”
“Howshecould,” Jack says.
“Yes,she,” Paul insists. “Tom wouldn’t do it himself.”
“Because he didn’t want to screw up his chance of a judgeship?”
“Because he had principles. Say what you want about his autocratic approach to life or his temper, but he didn’t break the law.”
“But he knew how to do it.”
The two are glaring at each other, Jack fighting for Team Elizabeth, Paul for Team Tom. Jack is the taller, more brooding and imposing of the two. But Paul has age and experience, which give him a certain gravity.
“Actually, he didn’t know himself, not this specific situation. But another of our partners did.”
That was one of the possibilities my sisters and I raised. Easier to swallow, perhaps.
“Oh, Tom was crafty.” Paul snorts, half in admiration, half disdain. “He asked so many detailed questions—all in the hypothetical, mind you—that the other fellow thought he was researching a novel, like the next John Grisham. The partner asked me about it, which is how I found out. Tom never discussed it with me himself.”
“Which makes it hearsay,” Jack argues and, pulling his hand from mine, cocks both of his on his hips.
“True,” Paul says.
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
“No. I didn’t want to know. Tom and your mother had a strange relationship. There was a tie between them that I never understood.” He eyes me. “I asked Eleanor about it once, but she dismissed it so quickly I never asked again.”
I could guess at her reasons and was just as glad. Infidelity, romantic competition, bisexuality—any one of these might muddy the waters of her relationship with Paul. As the product of that relationship, I wanted to keep it simple.
“I do know,” Paul went on, “that when the company continuedto flounder, she went back to the trust. Since she now knew how to fudge the numbers, and since she hoped that a larger infusion would do the trick, she took more—basically drained the estate’s reserve.”
“And you know this how?” Jack asks, still in attack mode.
Paul answers him, glare for glare. “Tom told me in the months after the accident.”
“Accident,” Jack mocks.
“Accident,” Paul states and shifts back to me. “He agonized, Mallory. He truly didn’t know what happened that night. She was there one minute and gone the next. He did not hit her, and he sure as hell didn’t shoot her. Whether she jumped or fell, he just didn’t know.”
“But why were they out there that night at all?” I ask, reliving the frustration we all felt at the time. “The ocean was churned up—”
“Not when they left. Tom was firm about that, and the forensic report supports it. It was foggy, but nothing that his chart-plotter couldn’t beat. The squalls were a ways off.” He broadens his gaze to include Jack. “She begged him to take her out. She needed his ear, needed his sympathy, his advice.”
