Markham met her in his shirt sleeves. Files stacked on top of his desk meant she’d interrupted him in the middle of preparing for a case.
“What’s wrong, Ada?” he asked. “You sounded upset on the phone.”
And from the way he was peering at her, she must have looked upset as well. Maybe she wasn’t as calm as she was pretending to be.
She sat in the original Eames chair she had found at a flea market. Gavin sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed. He clearly wasn’t going to treat her the way he would treat a normal client.
He was treating her like a friend.
His kindness made her hands shake. She took a few deep breaths, then reached inside her purse, removing two of the 1996 disks, her wallet, and her checkbook.
She slid the disks to him and explained what she had found. Then she took out the money order she’d made from the Urbanicks’ funds and handed it to Gavin.
“I want you to go to the police for me,” she said, “and turn in Rick. Then I want you to return the Urbanicks’ money, and contact their creditors. Everything is documented on this disk. I made one copy for you and another for the police.”
Then, without looking up, so that she wouldn’t have to see his reaction, she opened her checkbook and wrote him a check for ten thousand dollars. As she signed, she had an odd prescient flash: This would be the last time she would use her married name. In the future, she would have a new name, a made-up one, maybe, but one that would get her a fresh start somewhere else.
Her mouth was dry. She had loved Rick once. She wasn’t sure what had happened to that love, but it had been part of her. It still was, like the memory of summer sunsets and the promise of a bright future if she only followed all the rules.
“Ada?” Gavin said.
She looked up. He was watching her with concern.
She handed him the check. “This is your retainer plus,” she said. “Put it in some kind of account and take what you need for my case from it. I’ll let you know where I’m going so that you can send me the monthly accounting. I’m sure this’ll cost a lot, because I want you to start divorce proceedings, too — effective immediately.”
Gavin opened his mouth as if he were going to speak, but she wouldn’t let him. She wanted to get through this as quickly as possible.
“You’ll need to cash the check this afternoon,” she said. “I’ve taken it from our joint account, and I suspect that the moment Rick knows I’m gone, he’ll try to empty the accounts himself. So please—”
“I will. I’ll do everything you need.” Gavin folded his hands across his lap. “You’re planning to leave?”
She nodded. “I can’t stay here. Not when it comes out.”
“You’ll be the person who stopped him,” Gavin said.
Ada shook her head. “I’m the person who enabled him, all these years.”
“You had no idea how far he was going to take his obsession,” Gavin said.
“No,” she said. “But I should have.”
Gavin promised to handle her case, to make certain the police did not charge her when they went after Rick, and to make certain the Urbanicks’ financial reputation was restored. Gavin had her sign an official form, asking that the charges against Urbanick be dropped.
Ada left his office, knowing she had done everything she could.
When she reached the elevator banks, her cell phone started to ring. For a moment, she debated whether or not to answer, then pulled the phone out of her purse.
She answered as she got onto the elevator, riding it down to the parking garage.
“Ada?” Rick sounded panicked. “There’s something wrong with our account.”
Her heart pounded. “Our account?”
“The business account. I was going to move some funds—”
“You were going to move funds?” she blurted, the anger she’d been repressing all day slipping past her defenses. “What for?”
“That doesn’t matter, babe,” he said, just as he always had in cases like this. “What matters is that the bank tells me we’re short. You know anything about this?”
A lot, she wanted to say. But she had to remain silent. She didn’t want to tip Rick off. Gavin needed time to get the police involved.
“No.” She hoped the anger now sounded like panic. “You want me to go to the bank and check?”
“Could you?” Rick asked. “I’ve got a few things to do here.”
As if she were at his beck and call, as if the business she had just closed — the dreams she had just abandoned — were his and not hers.
“I’ll check,” she said, and hung up. She was shaking. He had no reason to move money from the business account.
But there had been a lot less in it than she had thought there should be, and their savings had seemed low, too. Her fault, for leaving the money in his hands. Her fault for trusting him.
From now on, she would trust only herself.
She reached her car, got in, and leaned against the steering wheel. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to continue. It would be so much easier to go home and let the events fall where they might.
But she had already started the ball rolling. And if she stayed, she would be blamed as much as Rick. Who would believe, in this day and age, that a businesswoman had closed her eyes to everything financial, had let a man ruin her life — and so many others — so effortlessly?
People would say that anyway, but she wouldn’t be around to hear it. And she would do her best to make restitution, returning to testify if she needed to.
She took a deep breath and realized that the shaking had stopped.
Progress. She was making a lot of progress.
She started the car and drove out of the parking garage. Her last stop was nearby, and then she was done.
One afternoon’s worth of work, and her life would be different forever.
Ada sold her car — their car — to a used-car dealer for a fistful of cash. She toyed with getting a new one, one that would be completely hers, but she didn’t want to put herself in any kind of debt, not when her future was so uncertain.
She wasn’t even sure she would go back to interior decorating. She might take a new job in her new home — wherever that would be. She was getting tired of improving the appearance of things without solving the problems underneath.
After she finished at the car dealership, she took a bus to the train station and bought a ticket with cash. She didn’t know how long it would take Rick to be arrested, and she didn’t want him to trace her.
For a while, she wanted to be completely on her own.
When they started calling her train, she grabbed her purse and her laptop and headed for the tracks. Halfway there, she stopped. She rummaged inside her purse for her cell phone and studied it for a moment.
It was her last link. More than the wedding ring she still wore on her left hand, it was the thing that bound her to Rick. Conversations she didn’t want, irritations she didn’t need, requests that were so inappropriate, she couldn’t believe he’d made them — or that she’d listened.
She threw the phone into a nearby trash bin and boarded the train, feeling lighter than she had in years.
Her ticket was coach, but she had the double seat to herself. As she stretched out on it, trying to keep her legs covered with the blanket she bought in the snack bar, she planned her next move.
She’d get off the train at the first interesting stop. Maybe she’d stay there, maybe she wouldn’t. She’d look around, though, and see if she liked what she saw.
Once she found a suitable home, she’d use the last of her business funds to rent a place, get a job, and figure out how to live her life with her eyes open instead of closed.
She’d keep expenses low. She’d still need money to send back to Gavin. She had a hunch the divorce would be complicated, and she wasn’t sure how the Urbanicks would react to her admission of what Rick had done.