CHAPTER 36

AN HOUR LATER MAG REMEMBERED THAT CAROL MACK HAD PHONED AGES AGO URGENTLY WANTING TO SPEAK TO HER MOTHER. “Mom, did Carol reach you?”

“No, when did she call?”

“About eight. She said it was urgent.”

“Okay.” Annie hurried into her room to return the call. She closed the door and lay down on her bed. Despite the stress at dinner, she now felt a secret guilty pleasure at having something separate from her family, something all her own. Something a little wild that somehow didn’t feel so terrible now that she was back in the hell of family chaos.

She dialed Carol’s number, and Carol picked up right away. “Hello, Annie.”

“How did it go? Are you all right?” Annie asked slowly, remembering that it was funeral day and that she hadn’t been invited.

“Thanks for calling back tonight. It was tough. I’ll miss her . . .” Carol’s voice trailed off.

“Of course. I’ve been thinking about you all day.” Annie heard a note in her friend’s voice. Something was up. “Are you all right?” she asked again.

“Not really. I think Matthew has a girlfriend.”

How odd to hear that tonight of all nights. Somehow it wasn’t surprising. The man was never home, and he’d been horribly disloyal to Ben. Disloyalty seemed to be a character flaw that spread wherever self-interest led it.

“I don’t know for sure, but it will help in the divorce, won’t it?” It sounded like Carol was fishing.

“Oh, Carol, are you breaking up again?” Annie wouldn’t be unhappy about it. Two bad marriages going down at the same time.

“This time I mean it,” she said.

“Did he go with you to the funeral today?”

“Oh yeah, he went. But he wasn’t really there and he didn’t help me with it. He didn’t talk to Dad at all. He didn’t even want to look at the will or anything. He told me I’m the executor, so I have to do the work.”

“How much is there to do?”

“Not that much. Dad owns the house and contents. He has to deal with that . . .” She paused. “Annie, I want you to know that I’ve really missed you these last months. I guess we drifted apart.”

The husbands and their differences had taken care of that. “I know. Me, too,” Annie said.

“I miss the girls. Mag sounds so unhappy.”

“Well, her whole class went to college, and she went to bed. How else could she feel?” Annie made herself more comfortable against the pillows. She felt both sad and angry at her daughter, and pushed away her own guilt for what had happened with Brian.

“What about therapy for her?” Carol suggested. She sounded so nice and concerned that Annie was lulled into a conversation that usually made her too anxious to explore.

“Ben has strong opposition. He doesn’t think it works,” she said slowly. “Mag follows her father’s lead on things like this.”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“Are you there?” Annie asked.

“Well, my mother never had therapy,” Carol said slowly. “She was a depressive if I ever saw one, and look what happened to her. You have to nip this in the bud, Annie. Maybe medicine would help.”

“Maybe.” Annie was noncommittal. She knew that Carol was talking about Mag’s depression, not Ben’s, but she wondered if she could put Prozac in all their food. Bebe’s, too. If she couldn’t force them into treatment, how about tricking them into taking happy pills?

There was another long silence. Annie was upset about receiving a suggestion she couldn’t take. She didn’t know what to say to lighten the moment. But Carol’s mother was dead. She was the one who needed consoling.

“Annie, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this.” Carol said this so slowly and with such weight that Annie knew the subject had changed to business. Despite every effort to remain calm, she actually felt the ax begin to fall.

“My dad wants to sue Hall Stale.”

There it was. Annie gulped. “Oh God,” she murmured.

“He called Brian and told him you stole some bonds. I’m really sorry, Annie. I had no idea he’d do this.”

“Oh God,” Annie said again.

“Annie, please don’t be mad at me. I’m going to take care of this. I know he’s crazy.”

Annie’s mouth was as dry as a desert. Once again Carol surprised her with a generosity she hadn’t expected. Carol had buried her mother. She was getting a divorce, but instead of thinking about herself she was thinking about Mag’s depression and the trouble her father might cause Annie.

Everything evil that she’d done suddenly crashed in on Annie like a tsunami. She’d committed adultery. Worse, she’d slept with a colleague. Worse than that, she hadn’t been honest with a friend. She hadn’t told Carol about the missing bonds right away. And even worse than all that, her children were floundering. She had to take action. She had to come clean.

“Carol, your father’s right,” she blurted out.

“What?”

“There are some missing bonds.”

“Missing bonds?” Carol sounded amazed. “Really? When did they go missing? How did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me?” The questions tumbled out.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Last week when I went to see your parents, it was—traumatic to say the least. I wasn’t expecting—”

“—them to be living in such a place,” Carol finished. “I know I should have warned you. I owe you an apology.”

“And then there were so many certificates! It took hours to count them all.”

“I’m sorry about that, too. I had no idea there was so much. Maybe you made a mistake about what was there.”

Annie could hear Carol desperately trying to help her out, just as she’d stuck with her when Matthew accused Ben of purchasing stock without his permission. Matthew had lost money from a number of transactions he’d made, and accused his friend of making them without his consent. It had been his only hope of getting his money back. He’d sacrificed his friend for money, then lost far more money when he’d moved to another brokerage firm. Annie knew she had to tell the truth.

“No, there’s no mistake. I made a list of everything that went into the shopping bag I took. The only problem occurred when I got back to the office after four. Everything went into the vault without being recorded. That night you called me and wanted it all back. I was so upset about your mother’s condition I wasn’t even thinking about the bonds.”

“But what happened?” Carol’s voice had the brittle edge of panic. She hated to lose money as much as her husband did.

“The compliance people wouldn’t let anything out of the office until we’d recorded everything that had come in. So the next day we started counting it and two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of bearer bonds wasn’t there.”

“Oh Jesus, Annie, why didn’t you tell me this last week?”

“Honestly, when it came up, I couldn’t believe it. It was such an unusual situation. I’ve never lost anything in my life. Just my keys, you know . . .” She waited for a laugh but didn’t get one.

“And then you sounded so angry at me when your father wanted it back. It was just crazy. After what Matthew did to Ben, I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to lose you as a friend. I’m sorry.”

“A quarter of a million dollars. How long were you going to hold out on me, Annie?”

“I wasn’t holding out,” Annie said. “I was digesting. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh God. Jesus. Would you have kept this secret if my dad hadn’t said anything?”

“No,” Annie said quickly. “No, no. It would have been taken care of. You’ll be reimbursed.” She wanted to spill her suspicion that Carol’s father had the bonds, that he was trying to double his money. But how could she do that the day her mother was buried?

“Does your manager know all this?”

“Of course. He knows everything. He’s the one who assured me insurance would take care of it. After the investigation, of course.” Now she was talking reimbursement; what happened to her principles?

“Are you having an affair with him?” Carol said suddenly.

Oh God, why was she back on men? “Of course not,” she said quickly.

Carol let her breath out in a whistle. “Well, that’s one good thing.”

“Why?” Annie was practically drowning in all her lies.

“I like him,” Carol said. “Maybe he’ll call me so we can talk about all this.”

“Ah, yeah. I’ll tell him,” Annie promised.

“And tell Mag I’m thinking about taking her to Florida. Call it a belated graduation present.”

“Really?” Annie was stunned. Where did that come from?