Chapter 11: Net Worth

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Wynn stood up and took the call boy by the elbow.

"Come on. I have pie, and you have a story, and these two need the room."

He went with her without a word.

The door clicked shut behind them.

The flat was very quiet.

Ephraim stood where he'd been standing, against my kitchen wall, with his hands at his sides.

He didn't try to speak first.

I looked at the phone in my hand, at the magazine cover, at the man on the container ship.

Thirty years old.

A man on a container ship, with more zeros behind his name than I could picture.

"Say it," I said.

"My name is Ephraim Stanwick. I founded Stanwick Freight eight years ago. I own most of it."

"And Thursday night."

"I walked into a bar in a red pocket square to keep a man from sitting at your table."

"And you took me for him." His voice stayed even.

"I should have told you in the first minute."

"Yes."

"I didn't."

"Why?"

"Because you'd just left a man who ran your life with his money."

He took a breath.

"You'd have looked at me and seen him. You'd have been right to."

"That's not an answer."

"It's most of one."

"Give me the rest."

He looked down at his hands.

"Statistics 201," he said. "I kept the page."

I stared at him.

He took out his wallet.

From behind his driver's license he drew a square of notebook paper folded very small and very soft with age.

He opened it, and there in the margin, in blue ink, was a fox I had drawn at twenty.

My throat tightened.

"I never said anything," he said.

"You had a boyfriend, and then I was building the company, and then I saw your wedding in the paper."

"I was twenty-five. I told myself it was over."

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