Chapter 20: The Thirtieth Day

Cora's POV

On the thirtieth day I went back to the nineteenth floor at nine in the morning, and half the desks were gone.

The partners had left in the first week.

The analysts had taken their plants and their framed photographs.

The glass wall over the lake showed bare carpet and the pale squares where pictures had hung.

Marguerite walked ahead of me down the hall with the portfolio under her arm.

"The wire cleared at eight," she said. "I checked it myself."

"You didn't have to do that."

"I took nothing he did not agree to sell," said Marguerite.

"The Lake Drive house was in his name and his father's, and I am the executor of his father's estate.

"He signed it over to me for what it was worth. He was very quiet about it."

"How much?"

"Enough for your loan and eight percent, to the penny, and the lawyer's fees besides. The rest I am keeping, for a grandchild who will need a roof."

She said it without looking at me.

I understood that she had been waiting a month to say it aloud.

Dalton was in the boardroom, alone.

The long table was bare, and so were the chairs.

He sat at the head with his hands flat on the wood, in the same navy suit he had worn on the day I called the loan.

It hung on him now.

He had not shaved.

"Mother," he said, without turning. "Cora."

"I have your statement," I said. "It's all there. The principal, the interest, and the day it was paid."

"I read the bank notice."

"Then it's done."

I put the divorce papers on the table in front of him.

They were Agnes's lawyer's papers, and they were short.

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