Chapter 16: Real Numbers

We read the binder at the kitchen table, all three of us, with the oven light on and the coffee going cold.

My father put on his glasses and read the pledge twice.

"Sixty million dollars," he said. "Against your grandmother's trust."

"Against a marriage that didn't exist on the day she signed it," I said.

"Dated the second of November," Teddy said, tapping the page. "That's two days after the ball."

"She lost the Point offer in front of the whole room, and two days later she'd sold you."

"She sold the wedding," I said.

I turned the page.

The pledge named a lender, a private fund with a long dull name, and a signatory at the bottom whose signature I knew.

It was the husband of the woman I had known since kindergarten.

She had sat next to me at supper and would not look at me.

"That's why she couldn't meet your eyes," my father said gently.

"She knew."

"Perhaps she only suspected."

"She knew, Dad."

The next section was a list of Delacourt accounts, and I read it the way you read a diagnosis.

The Delacourt Group had nine thousand dollars in cash.

The family house on Field Point Road carried two mortgages and a tax lien.

Regina's jewelry had been appraised in September, and half of it had been sold in October.

Under that was a tab with Preston's name on it.

I had expected something awful, and what I found was almost worse.

Preston had eleven thousand dollars to his name, and a credit card balance of eight hundred thousand.

Most of it was for me.

There was a line for the ring, which had been rented.

There was a line for the flowers, the church, the band and the honeymoon in Lisbon, all paid for by borrowing on his name.

"Oh, Preston," I whispered.

"He bought your engagement with money he didn't have," Teddy said slowly. "And she made him pay for it twice."

I laid my hand flat on the page.

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