Chapter 4: Beacon Hill

The library had green silk on the walls and a fire nobody had lit.

Winslow's mother sat behind the desk that had been her father's.

Winslow's father stood by the window with his hands behind his back.

Winslow came in last and shut the door on the quartet.

He leaned against the bookshelves with his arms folded.

"Sit," his mother said to me.

I sat.

She opened the top drawer and took out my envelope.

So Winslow had handed it over.

She laid the papers flat and smoothed them with both palms.

"The old man from number nine will have told his whole club by midnight," she said. "Half of them were in that room."

"I'm sorry it was embarrassing for you."

"You're not sorry. Don't start lying now, Margaret, you were never any good at it."

That was almost a compliment.

She turned to her son.

"Two hundred people just watched a man of seventy-eight call you a coward. Tomorrow they'll repeat it to the Globe."

"Let them," Winslow said.

"No." She didn't raise her voice. "You will sign this before the new year."

Winslow laughed.

"You can't be serious. You told her an hour ago no Endicott gets divorced."

"An hour ago I didn't know you'd left your wife in a burning house."

His father turned from the window and looked at his son for a long moment.

Then he turned back to the snow without a word.

"If it isn't signed by the thirty-first," his mother said, "you can explain to the board why your seat at the firm is going to your cousin."

Winslow's arms came down from his chest.

"You'd do that over her?"

"Over you."

She slid the papers across the desk to me.

"What do you want? Say it now, while I'm listening."

I had thought about it every night on that camp bed.

"My father's house. My own name back. Not one cent of yours."

Winslow made a small sound, almost amused.

"Not a cent?"

"Not one."

His mother looked at me over her glasses for a long time.

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