Chapter 28: Dinner at the Tower

Harold Rhodes's dining room was on the fifty-second floor of the tower his son ran, or had run until Saturday.

The table sat twelve, and he had laid two places at one end.

"Sit," he said.

I stayed standing until he did.

A silent man in a white jacket poured wine into my glass, and I put my hand over it.

"I don't drink anything I haven't watched open," I said.

Harold smiled very slightly.

"Sensible," he said. "You are the sort of woman who keeps a second door."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning a studio in Brooklyn that you paid for in secret for ten years. I admire a person who plans her exits."

I said nothing.

He cut his steak into small, exact squares and did not eat any of them.

"I will be brief, since I am told you dislike a long dinner. My son is a very good purchasing department."

"That is a strange thing to call him."

"He buys what I tell him to buy. He bought you." He lifted his gaze. "A man who gets a thing for free does not understand its price. I do."

"I'm not a purchase."

"Everyone is a purchase, Mrs. Rhodes."

"Winslow."

"Of course."

He took a single typed page from beside his plate and slid it across the linen.

"Read it. I am told you do."

I read it all the way down, slowly, while he watched.

It was a separation agreement.

I would leave Nathaniel within sixty days and call it a mutual decision.

In return I would keep my lab, my name on every bottle and ten million dollars.

At the bottom, in the middle of the sixth paragraph, was a line I read twice.

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