“Sondheim?” Jack asked. “I approve.”
“Hooray,” Melody said.
They sat listening to Melody hum for a minute or two, something from West Side Story. “Sondheim didn’t actually compose that show,” Jack said. “He wrote the lyrics—”
“Jack?” Bea cut him off. “Not now.” She stood and smoothed her skirt, cleared her throat. “Listen. I have an idea. A proposal. I don’t need my share of The Nest. I’m okay right now. I’m not going to lose my apartment, I don’t have kids with immediate financial needs. Leo has obviously forfeited his claim. So if you two split what’s there, the $200,000, that should help, right?”
“No,” Melody said, removing the soggy napkin from her eyes. Her mascara was smeared, her nostrils red. “I’m not taking your money. That’s not fair.”
“But I want you to,” Bea said. “We can call it a loan if that makes you feel better. A no-interest, no-deadline loan. I know it’s not enough for either of you to completely resolve the loss, but it’s something.”
“Are you sure?” Melody said, quickly calculating that Bea was giving them one entire year of tuition—more if it wasn’t a private school, which, increasingly, did not seem to be in the cards. “You don’t want to take some more time and think about it?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot in the last week. I don’t need more time.”
“Because if you’re sure,” Melody said, “yes, it would help.”
“I’m sure,” Bea said, visibly pleased. “Jack?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I consider it a loan, but yes.” The extra money wasn’t enough to completely extricate him from his mess, but it might—just might—be enough to buy time for the house or maybe to get Walker to start taking his phone calls again. “It won’t be quick, but I’ll pay you back.”
“Okay,” Bea said, sitting back down, pleased. “Good. Good! This is progress. And if George can find Leo, I’ll go and talk to him.”
“He won’t find him,” Jack said. “And even if he does, nothing will change.”
“I can try,” Bea said. “I can try to change things.”
Melody blew her nose, rooted through her purse for more tissues. She had the hiccups. “When did Leo start hating us?” she said. Nobody responded. “How was it so easy for him to leave?” She wasn’t crying anymore, she was spent. “Was it really just about money? Was it about us?”
“People leave,” Jack said. “Life gets hard and people bail.” Bea and Melody exchanged a worried look. Jack didn’t look good, and he wouldn’t talk about Walker or the fight at the birthday dinner. He’d fiddled incessantly with his wedding ring since they sat down. “Besides,” he said, a little brighter now, arms spread wide, “what could possibly be wrong with any of us?”
Bea grinned. Melody, too. Jack laughed a little. And as they sat, trying to muster the momentum to make their way out of the office, they all thought about that day at the Oyster Bar, seeing Leo’s agreeability then for what it really was. Jack wondered how he—of all of them, the one the least susceptible to Leo—could not have been more suspicious about how disarming and humble Leo had been. Bea remembered how it had seemed that Leo was maybe, kind of, taking responsibility and evincing a desire to make good. How he’d leaned forward and put his palms on the table and looked each of them in the eye—sincerely, affectionately—and told them he was going to find a way to pay them back, he just needed time. She remembered how he’d asked them to trust him and how she’d believed, too, because Leo had lowered his head and when he looked back up at them, damn if his eyes weren’t the tiniest bit damp, damn if he didn’t seduce them all into giving him the slack he probably imagined he’d have to work much harder to obtain. How grateful he must have been in that moment, Melody thought, to discover how little they were asking from him, to realize how eager they were to believe him.
CHAPTER THIRTY–SEVEN
Exactly ten days after the birthday dinner, Walker moved to a new place. He would have left the next morning, but it took him that long to find a short-term rental that wasn’t too far from his office. Until the minute Walker wordlessly lugged two boxes and three suitcases loaded with clothes into a taxi, both he and Jack thought he was bluffing.
The story about the statue had unraveled with stunning celerity the night of the dinner party. After Stephanie’s unfortunately timed announcement about Leo’s disappearance, Walker had pulled Jack into the kitchen.
“If Leo hasn’t been around for weeks, how have you been meeting with Leo?”
Jack equivocated, but that only made Walker assume he was covering up an indiscretion, an affair. Jack had no choice but to explain, and as he watched the color drain from Walker’s face, he almost wished he’d made up some kind of flirtation to confess instead.
Walker had slowly removed his apron and folded it into a neat square. “What you are doing is not only against the law, it’s completely unethical,” Walker said, practically spitting out every syllable.