Chapter 2 - Sixty Percent
Grant crossed the dining room with the quick, deliberate stride he used when a contractor had given him an answer he didn’t like. He stopped close enough to block the door without touching me.
“What are you doing here?”
For a moment, I could only look at him. Two hours earlier, he had been too busy to spend one hour with me. Now his office emergency was sitting in a booth with a diamond at her throat.
“I had dinner.”
“Here?” His eyes narrowed. “You followed me.”
I opened my purse and took out my receipt. The paper had gone soft where I’d held it beneath my phone. I showed him the time I’d paid, just after nine.
“I came alone. I finished eating before you walked in.”
He barely glanced at it.
“You expect me to believe this is a coincidence?”
“You don’t have to believe me. It’s a receipt.”
Behind him, Sloane left the booth and came toward us. I had seen her at company events dozens of times. She usually greeted me with a bright smile and a question about whether I’d baked something for the staff. Tonight she kept her champagne glass in her hand.
“Evelyn,” she said. “This doesn’t need to become a scene.”
“I agree.”
Grant looked over his shoulder at the other tables. A few diners had noticed us, though the pianist was still playing and nobody had turned around in their chair.
“Then lower your voice,” he said.
I hadn’t raised it.
That was the first moment I understood how little I needed to do to help him tell his story. Standing in my navy dress near the door was enough. If I cried, I would be unstable. If I argued, I would be threatening. Even my silence could be made to look like something he had survived.
I turned to Simon, who had come from the dining room when he saw us gathering.
“Could we speak over there?” I asked, indicating the short passage beside the hostess stand. “I don’t want to interrupt dinner.”
Simon led us a few steps away from the tables. Sloane followed Grant; neither of them offered to return to their booth.
Grant gave Simon a tight smile.
“My wife misunderstood a private conversation.”
Simon looked at him, then at me.
“I heard you ask Mr. Simon to put something in writing about me,” I said. “I’d like him to say what he remembers, in his own words.”
Grant’s hand closed around the back of an empty chair.
“Evelyn, don’t do this.”
Simon took a breath.
“Mr. Grant asked me for a written account saying you were intoxicated and threatening toward his companion,” he said. “I had witnessed no such behavior. I told him I couldn’t provide that account.”
The pianist reached the end of a song. In the brief quiet that followed, I could hear the little click of Sloane setting her glass on a shelf by the wall.
“You’re leaving out the context,” Grant said.
“I’m telling her what I was asked to do,” Simon replied.
I appreciated the care in his answer. He didn’t claim to know what Grant planned to do with a report, or what had happened in our marriage. He described a request and his refusal. That was more than enough.
Sloane folded her arms.
“She’s remarkably composed for someone who supposedly just discovered us here. Doesn’t that strike anyone as rehearsed?”
I felt the remark land. She had helped Grant ask for evidence that I was irrational; now she wanted my composure to count against me, too.
The waitress who had served me appeared at the entrance to the passage. She held a small payment folder against her apron.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“I’m leaving,” I told her. “Could you tell them what you observed while I was here? Only what you remember.”
She looked at Simon first, as if checking whether he needed her back in the dining room. He gave a small nod.
“She ate dinner by herself,” the waitress said. “She had tea. She was polite to me.”
“Did she threaten anyone?” Simon asked.
“No.”
“Was she drunk?”
“No. I didn’t serve her alcohol.”
Grant let go of the chair. There was a faint crescent where his thumb had pressed into the upholstery.
Sloane said, “That isn’t the point.”
“It’s the point I was asked about,” the waitress answered. She returned to her tables, carrying the folder with her.
I wanted to thank her properly. I also wanted to apologize for pulling her into a disagreement she had never chosen. Instead, I waited until she glanced back and mouthed, “Thank you.” She nodded once.
Grant stepped closer.
“Come home. We’ll talk there.”
The old rhythm of those words caught me off guard. For years, I had gone home to have conversations Grant didn’t want anyone else to hear. Sometimes he apologized. More often he explained why I’d made his day harder. By morning, I was usually trying to make peace with an account of events I no longer recognized.
“No,” I said.
His face tightened. “You’re going to discuss our marriage with restaurant employees?”
“You brought them into it when you asked Simon to write about me.”
“I was trying to prevent a disturbance.”
“Then you could have left me alone.”
Sloane looked toward the dining room, suddenly attentive to who might be watching. I found myself thinking of the unopened chocolate cake on our kitchen counter. I’d carefully smoothed the frosting along its sides because Grant liked it that way. It seemed impossible that I had done that only hours ago.
Simon spoke quietly.
“Mrs. Pierce, I’ll speak to the owner about the records you asked me to retain. I still need to check the camera schedule.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I understand you haven’t confirmed whether there’s footage.”
Grant’s eyes moved between us.
“What records?”
“My dinner receipt, for one.” I slipped it back into my purse. “I’d rather keep an ordinary record than argue about what you might say happened.”
For the first time, Grant seemed to consider that his conversation with Simon had been heard from beginning to end. He looked at Sloane. She stared at the floor.
“Evelyn,” he said, softening his voice, “let’s not make decisions tonight that affect everyone at the office.”
I had been thinking about the office all evening. About the people who opened the buildings every morning and answered calls from tenants, and the people who expected their wages on time. They were the reason I had not confronted Grant the moment he walked in. They were also the reason I could not simply go home and hope the numbers I’d found would explain themselves.
“There’s already an appointment tomorrow morning,” I said.
Grant frowned. “What appointment?”
“An account review. I arranged it with Claire Park, my attorney, and Dana Ortiz, an independent accountant.”
Sloane looked up sharply. Grant’s expression stayed still, but I saw him take his hand off the chair.
“What accounts?” he asked.
“The company’s. I’ve been looking at payments that need explanations.”
“You went through our books without telling me?”
“I’ve always worked in our books, Grant.”
He gave a short laugh that held no amusement.
“You found an accountant because of a few marketing charges? You could have asked Sloane.”
“I may ask her. Dana can help me understand what the records actually show first.”
“I run that company.”
“You run its day-to-day work,” I said. “I hold sixty percent of its voting interests.”
I had not raised my voice. I hadn’t threatened to fire him or announced a decision I had no right to make. I had stated something written in an agreement we both knew existed.
Even so, the color drained from his face.
He glanced toward Simon, then the dining room, as if he had only just remembered how many people had heard us. For years he had introduced me as his little bookkeeper. He seemed to expect me to remain one even when I held the agreement in my hands.
“Voting interests don’t mean you can walk in and take over,” he said.
“I didn’t say they did. Claire will help me understand the proper process. Dana is there to examine records, not to decide who’s guilty.”
Sloane’s pendant caught the light when she turned toward him.
“Grant, we should sit down,” she said.
He ignored her.
“You’re going to bring strangers in and make employees wonder whether their jobs are safe?”
The question hurt because it was the one I had been asking myself. I thought of the people who would be at their desks tomorrow, unaware of this conversation, and made myself answer carefully.
“I want to know whether the money is where it should be. That matters to their jobs.”
Grant looked at me for a long moment.
“You don’t understand what you’re starting.”
“Maybe not all of it,” I said. “That’s why I scheduled the meeting.”
I thanked Simon once more and walked to the door. Nobody stopped me. Outside, the air was cold enough to make me pull my coat closed before I reached the sidewalk.
I stood beneath Bellwether’s awning and checked that the receipt was still in my purse. My phone held the note I had made before Grant approached. I added what I could remember of our conversation, separating Simon’s words from mine, then put the phone away. I did not know whether he or the waitress would ever want to speak about tonight again. They had already done more than I could fairly ask.
Through the window, I could see Grant standing in the passage with Sloane. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at his phone.
Mine vibrated.
May you like
For an instant I thought he might apologize, and I hated the small part of me that still wanted him to. The message was from Grant, but there was no apology.
*Before you sit down with your accountant, think about everything you’ve signed over the years. Your signature is on more than you know.*
