Chapter 3
Fernanda Barnes was staring at a stack of bills, as she sat at her kitchen table. She felt as though she had been looking at the same stack of bills for the four months since her husband died, two weeks after Christmas. But she knew only too well that even though the stack seemed the same, it grew bigger every day. Each time the mail came in, there were new additions. It had been a never-ending stream of bad news and frightening information since Allan's death. The latest being that the insurance company was refusing to pay on his life insurance policy. She and the attorney had been expecting that. He had died in questionable circumstances while on a fishing trip in Mexico. He had gone out on the boat late at night, while his traveling companions slept at the hotel. The crew members had been off the boat, at a local bar, when he took the boat out and had apparently fallen overboard. It had taken five days to recover his body. Given his financial circumstances at the time of his death, and a disastrous letter he'd left for her, filled with despair, the insurance company suspected it was a suicide. Fernanda suspected that as well. The letter had been given to the insurance company by the police.
Fernanda had never admitted it to anyone, except their attorney, Jack Waterman, but suicide had been the first thing she thought of when they called her. Before that, Allan had been in a state of shock and panic for six months, and kept telling her he was going to turn things around, but the letter made it clear that even he didn't believe that in the end. Allan Barnes had had one of those extraordinary lottery-ticket-type windfalls at the height of the dot-com era, and sold a fledgling company to a monolith for two hundred million dollars. She had liked their life fine before. It suited her perfectly. They had a small, comfortable house in a good neighborhood in Palo Alto, near the Stanford campus, where they had met in college. They had married in the Stanford chapel the day after graduation. Thirteen years later, he had hit the big time. It was more than she'd ever dreamed of, hoped for, needed, or wanted. She couldn't even understand it at first. Suddenly he was buying yachts and airplanes, a co-op in New York for when he had business meetings there, a house in London he claimed he had always wanted. A condo in Hawaii, and a house in the city so vast that she had cried when she first saw it. He had bought it without even asking her. She didn't want to move into a palace. She loved the house in Palo Alto that they had lived in since their son Will was born.
Despite Fernanda's protests, they had moved to the city four years before, when Will was twelve, Ashley was eight, and Sam was just barely two years old. Allan had insisted she hire a nanny so she could travel with him, which Fernanda hadn't wanted either. She loved taking care of her children. She had never had a career, and had been fortunate that Allan had always made enough to support them. It had been tight sometimes, but when it was, she tightened the belt at home, and they squeaked through it. She loved being home with their babies. Will had been born nine months to the day after their wedding, and she had worked part time in a bookstore while she was pregnant the first time and never since. She had majored in art history in college, a relatively useless subject, unless she wanted to get a master's, or even a doctorate, and teach, or work at a museum. Other than that, she had no marketable skills. All she knew how to be was a wife and mother, and she was a good one. Their kids were happy and wholesome and sensible. Even with Ashley at twelve and Will at sixteen, potentially challenging ages, she had never had a single problem with their children. They hadn't wanted to move into the city either. All their friends were in Palo Alto.
The house Allan had chosen for them was enormous. It had been built by a famous venture capitalist, who sold it when he retired and moved to Europe. But to Fernanda, it looked like a palace. She had grown up in a suburb of Chicago, her father had been a doctor and her mother a schoolteacher. They had always been comfortable, and unlike Allan, she had simple expectations. All she wanted was to be married to a man who loved her, and have wonderful children. She spent a lot of time reading up on experimental educational theories, she was fascinated by psychology in relation to childrearing, and she shared her passion for art with them. She encouraged them to be and become all that they dreamed of. And she had always done the same with Allan. She just hadn't expected him to make his dreams materialize to the extent he did.
When he told her he had sold his company for two hundred million dollars, she nearly fainted, and thought he was kidding. She laughed at him, and figured maybe with some extraordinary luck, he might have sold the company for one or two or five, or at a wild guess, ten, but never two hundred million. All she wanted was enough to get their kids through college, and live comfortably for the rest of their days. Maybe enough so Allan could retire at a decent age, so they could spend a year traveling in Europe, and she could drag him through museums. She would have loved to spend a month or two in Florence. But what his windfall represented to them was beyond dreaming. And Allan dove into it with a vengeance.
He not only bought houses and co-ops, a yacht and a plane, but he made some extraordinarily risky high-tech investments. And each time he did, he assured Fernanda that he knew what he was doing. He was riding the crest of the wave, and felt invincible. He was a thousand percent confident of his own judgment, more so than she was at the time. They started fighting over it. He laughed at her fears. He was plunging money into other companies that had yet to prove themselves, while the market was skyrocketing, and everything he touched turned to gold for nearly three years. It appeared that no matter what he did, or what he risked, he could not lose money, and didn't. On paper for the first year or two, their immense new fortune actually doubled. Notably, he invested in two companies that he had total faith in, and others warned him might plummet. But he didn't listen, not to her or the others. His confidence soared to dizzying heights, while she decorated the new house, and he chided her for being so pessimistic and so cautious. By then, even she was getting used to their new wealth, and starting to spend more money than she thought she should, but Allan kept telling her to enjoy it and not worry. She stunned herself by buying two important Impressionist paintings at a Christie's auction in New York, and literally shook as she hung them in their living room. It had never even dawned on her that one day she might own those paintings, or any like them. Allan congratulated her on her good decision. He was flying high and having fun, and wanted her to enjoy it too.
But even at the height of the market, Fernanda was never extravagant, nor did she forget her more modest beginnings. Allan's family was from southern California, and they had lived more lavishly than hers had. His father was a businessman, and his mother had been a housewife, and a model in her youth. They had had expensive cars, and a nice house, and belonged to a country club. Fernanda had been seriously impressed the first time she went there, although she thought them both somewhat superficial. His mother had been wearing a fur coat on a balmy night, as it dawned on her that even living in the frozen winters of the Midwest her mother had never owned one, and wouldn't want to. The show of wealth was far more important to Allan than it was to her, even more so once his overnight success broadsided them. His one regret was that his parents hadn't lived to see it. It would have meant the world to them. And in her own way, Fernanda was relieved that her parents were gone too, and couldn't see it. They had died in a car accident on an icy night ten years before. But something in her gut always told her that her parents would have been shocked at the way Allan was spending money, and it still made her nervous, even after she bought the two paintings. At least they were an investment, or at least she hoped so. And she truly loved them. But so much of what Allan bought was about showing off. And as he kept reminding her, he could afford it.