“Nothing. I thought it was best to stay away from it. You said there hasn’t been much written.”
He refilled his glass and carefully wedged the top back on the bottle. “Did I? Well. That’s right. There hasn’t been, much. Well. It’s going to be a pretty long Christmas vacation for me, as it turns out. I decided to take a leave of absence from the firm.”
“You barely take vacations.”
“I think it’ll help clear up some of the issues and help calm down the government.”
“Dad, doesn’t that kind of implicate you? If you’re leaving the firm in the middle of this big investigation?”
“I’m not leaving the firm. I’m just taking a leave.”
“Nothing’s happened, right? The grand jury hasn’t found anything?”
Dale tapped the nail file against the desk. “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“So isn’t this asking for it? Shouldn’t you just carry on as if nothing’s wrong?”
“My lawyer and I think it’s best.”
“Dad, grand jury investigations are not that big of a deal. It’s how you handle it that matters. Taking a leave will make people talk. I’m serious. Taking a leave will make people wonder if you did something wrong. You should just go on and pretend like everything’s fine.”
“Why don’t we entertain the notion that I know more about the law than you do?” Dale said. He tapped the file against the desk several times, then placed his hand on a thin beige volume that was open to a page of black-and-white photos. “Do you know what this is?” he said.
“No.”
“Take a look.” He stood up and walked the book, yellowed around its edges, to her. His hair was speckled with gray now. Evelyn tried to remember when it hadn’t been, when he had last had a full head of brown hair, but she couldn’t. When does the body start to bend forward, the tics become strange old-man habits? Dale cleared his throat as if to answer her, and the clearing turned into a heavy, phlegm-filled hack.
“Scipio High,” Dale said. “I was on the baseball team. The Raiders. All of the mill towns had them then. Older folks’ leagues, too. They’d hire a foreman just because he was a great shortstop.” He looked at her, searching for something he did not locate, then flipped the yearbook to a page that the book easily opened to. It was a photo of her father, with knee socks and a self-assured grin and a flattop haircut, leading a group of swaggering boys across a field. His eyes were trained on the camera even as he shouted something to the pack with sly parted lips.
“I was the baseball captain. I was pretty good. That’s Jimmy Happabee there behind me. He was a hell of a catcher. We used to drive around town like a couple of crazy men in his dad’s truck on Saturday night. That was the one night we didn’t have to work.” He pulled the book back, then closed it. “Another world, I guess. The old folks said it then, and damned if I haven’t turned into one of them.” He looked at her. “You’re happy, aren’t you? You liked Sheffield and Davidson?”
“Yeah, Dad, I did.”
“You’ve got good friends. You’ve got money. Plenty of money.”
She took a sip of coffee. Was that why he’d done this, if he’d done it? To provide for his family? Or was it to provide for himself? Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. She didn’t know exactly how much money her family had, but estimated it was at least several million, given the big sums her father had won balanced against the often excessive way her parents spent. Her father probably thought those millions were enough to gain instant entry into New York society, when several million was what a mediocre hedge-fund manager made in a single year.
“I’m doing fine, Dad,” she said.
His hand trembled as he replaced the book on his desk. “That’s good. That’s good to hear. I’ll put this back. It’ll just be on the shelf over there. You can look at it if you like.”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to know, Evelyn, that even if the grand jury finds something, all right, that the law means everything to me, and I would never have, never did, cross it.”
She didn’t quite believe him. Her father had always managed to line up ambition and the law, and this was an instance where it was ambition versus the law. She was pretty sure what side he would have chosen. You never think you’re going to get caught, she thought, until you get caught. “Okay,” she finally said. “Dad, if you’re on leave, what about the Luminaries?”
“The what?” He shook his head. “Oh, your friend’s dinner. You’d best cancel.”
“I’d best cancel? I was the one who told you not to do it in the first place.”
“What does it matter, Evelyn? It’s one dinner.”
“She’s signed you up. She’s going to kill me if you drop out. And what about the money?”
“What money?”
“The donation? That you have to give? She signed you up for twenty-five thousand.”
“You never mentioned a twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation.”