Chapter 5: Power Out

I didn't take the fifty thousand dollars.

I didn't throw it in his face either, which I regret, because I was too shaken to throw anything.

I slid the envelope back across the cooler lid and asked what circumstances.

Stanford only smiled and said, "Ask your employer."

I asked nobody.

I worked the afternoon with my mouth shut, and the clouds on the ridge went from gray to bruised.

By five the sky had turned a sick green, and the radio was full of storm warnings.

By six the first bolt hit somewhere behind the 12th.

The whole staff was herded into the clubhouse, forty cart girls and caddies and line cooks standing in the ballroom with their phones lit.

Then the power went out.

Every light in the building died at once.

Someone screamed, then laughed, and Birdie's voice cut through the dark.

"Everybody stay put. Generators are on the south wing, so it'll be ten minutes."

I wasn't staying put.

I was thinking about Stanford and the envelope and a dismissal letter with my father's name on it.

I slipped out through the kitchen, and ran through the rain to the glass building on the ridge, because that was where the answers were.

The door was unlocked.

The lobby was black.

I climbed four flights in the dark with water running down my neck and my sneakers squeaking, and I pushed his door open without knocking.

Lightning lit the room white.

Ramsay stood at the window in his shirtsleeves.

He turned, and the flash caught his face, and he looked at me.

"Mara," he said.

It was the first time he had said it.

"What happened eighteen years ago?"

"You're soaked. Come away from the door."

"Stanford Lorring said you'd never tell me the truth. So tell me."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I promised."

He stopped, because I had crossed the room.

I was dripping on his floor, and I didn't care.

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