And by the time she and Brock left for East Hampton for the weekend, on Friday afternoon, they were both exhausted. He was still annoyed that she hadn't taken the bull by the horns with Sam, and pressed him for an immediate divorce, and she thought Brock was being unreasonable and childish. They had a big fight about it again on Friday night, and for the first time in her five-month affair with him, they both went to bed angry.

But in the morning, as they woke up, he reached over and pulled her close to him and told her he was sorry.

“I'm sorry I'm such an idiot about all this, he just scares me,” he said, and Alex turned to look at him in amazement.

“Sam? Why, for heaven's sake? The poor guy's practically in jail. He's got plenty of problems of his own, what's to scare you?”

“History. Time. Annabelle. It doesn't matter what kind of sonofabitch the guy was to you last year, he's still your husband, and he had seventeen years with you before that. That carries a lot of weight. It's hard to fight that.” He looked at her knowingly, and she couldn't deny it, but she loved him too, and she wanted him to know it.

“You don't have to worry, Brock,” she said holding him close to her, and smoothing his hair with her hand, like a child. Sometimes she felt light-years older, but she was touched by what he was feeling, and he was right in some ways. The things he talked about had bound her to Sam for close to two decades. But Brock had a history with her too, a history of incredible kindness, and she couldn't ignore that either. Besides, she loved him. “Don't worry about him. I'll get it all worked out after the trial. It just didn't seem right to do it before that. Like his moving out before I finished chemo. I'm sure he wanted to, but even as lousy as he was at the time, he stayed till I was finished. Sometimes it's just a question of basic decency and good manners.” She smiled and Brock smiled at her in answer. He relaxed for the first time in days and held her close to him.

“Just make sure good manners don't keep you married to him, or my manners are going to fall apart in a hurry. I may kill him.” Brock was the gentlest person she knew, and she knew he didn't mean it. He just wanted her out of her marriage to Sam, and she didn't blame him. She wanted that too. But in the right way, at the right time, without causing even more damage.

They spent an easy weekend on the beach, and packed up their things with regret on Monday. He had rented a station wagon to take everything home with them, and they were unpacking her things at her apartment when Sam came home with Annabelle. And she looked a lot happier than she did after her weekends with Daphne, but this time Sam looked a little startled. Suddenly, seeing Brock help her unload the car made Sam realize that there was more to it than just work at the office.

“Can I give you a hand?” Sam asked politely, carrying a box into the front hall. He suddenly felt like a stranger in what had been his home, and he realized he didn't belong there. Brock was painfully polite to him, and Alex was very pleasant, but when he saw Annabelle with them, he realized that this was a unit he could no longer interfere with. They were part of it, and he wasn't.

He left shortly afterwards, feeling depressed, and Brock looked pleased. There was no question. The message had been clear. “She's mine now,” and Sam had got it.





Chapter 21

Annabelle went back to nursery school after Labor Day, and the rest of them went back to their usual routine. Alex had taken on her full workload again, and she appeared in court almost daily. Brock was still helping her, but he had his own cases too, and they didn't work as constantly together as they had while she was in chemo. And they both agreed that they missed it.

Several of her partners had commended her for her fortitude in hanging in while she was sick, and she had become something of a legend in the law firm. And in spite of the amount of time they still spent together almost every day, no one had yet figured out that she and Brock were seriously involved with each other. It had remained a well-kept secret.

Brock spent every night with them after work, but he still kept his own apartment, and most of the time, he slept there. Neither of them thought it would be good for Annabelle to have him living there full time, so he forced himself to get up in the middle of the night and go home, which they both hated. He only spent the night there, in the guest room, on weekends. And both Brock and Alex were anxious to tell Sam about the divorce, and get their life in order quickly, if only to get a good night's sleep, as Brock put it. But Annabelle was crazy about him, and probably wouldn't have minded if he'd moved in completely.

In September, Sam's trial was more than two months away. And by October, his meetings at the firm had stepped up radically with Phillip Smith and the team he'd created to mount Sam's defense. It was going to be a tough case to win, and they all knew it. Even Sam had few illusions. He'd closed his office by then, and all of the employees had been discharged. In the end, they had cheated people out of roughly twenty-nine million dollars. It could have been a lot worse, but Sam had done what he could to minimize clients' losses, and he was trying to activate whatever insurance policies he could to reimburse people for the difference. But no matter how you looked at it, it was ugly. His efforts to help people recoup what they could was not to improve his defense but simply part of who he always had been. If anything, he seemed more himself now. He seemed happier and more at peace, although when Alex saw him at meetings with Phillip, he was strained, and often nervous. The prospect of going to prison terrified him, but he also realized it was a strong possibility. Phillip had told him more than once that keeping him out of jail was going to be a long shot.

By late October, deals were being made, and the prosecutors were trying to get all of them to plead guilty, but so far no one would do it. They were offered shortened sentences as an exchange, but even that wasn't too appealing. Particularly to Sam, whose defense was still that he had been extremely stupid, but not intentionally dishonest.

“Think it'll fly?” Brock asked her honestly, one weekend when they were watching Annabelle in the playground. And she thought about it for a minute, before she answered.

“I'm not sure,” she said honestly. “I hope it does, for his sake. But if I were on a jury and he told me he was too dumb to know that his partners were ripping him off while he was busy getting laid, I think I'd laugh my ass off, and send him straight to prison.”

“That's how I figure it too,” he said, but he wasn't entirely sorry for him, and he still thought he deserved it. But Alex always disagreed with him.

¥bu can't send a guy to jail for being shitty to his wife when she's having chemo, Brock. That's bullshit. That doesn't make him a criminal, it makes him an asshole. The issue here isn't me, it's was he cheating people knowingly?” No matter what else they were, they were lawyers, and the conversation often turned to their cases.

“He knew, don't tell me he didn't. He didn't want to know. But he knew damn well Simon wasn't clean. You even said so.”

“I thought the guy was a crook,” she said thoughtfully, “but Sam always defended him. It was all so easy, the money just kept rolling in, from what he said, I guess he wanted to believe it was on the level. He was naive to believe it, but again, that's not a felony.”

“He should have checked a lot more closely.”

“Yes, he should. That's where I think his love life got in the way.”

“It's going to be a juicy trial,” Brock predicted, and it was. The papers were full of it from the moment they started taking depositions. And by November fifteenth, people were taking bets in the financial community as to who would go to prison, and who wouldn't. Everyone figured that Simon would somehow weasel out of it, he was just too slippery not to. He'd been continuing to do business in Europe while waiting for the trial, and was involved in half a dozen shady deals there, but nothing seemed to stop him. And it was predicted that Larry and Tom were going to go to jail. But Sam was the dark horse that no one could figure. Most people thought he would, but there were a few who thought he wouldn't. He had had an excellent reputation for a long time, and some of the old-timers bought his story, though the younger men on Wall Street didn't. They thought he should have known, or did know, and didn't want to hear it, which was what Brock thought too.

And when the trial began, Alex was there. She watched the jury selection and conferred with Sam in the halls, just to keep him distracted. He had four attorneys, and there were five others involved in the other three's defense. It was a huge event, and the courtroom was filled with reporters. Alex had asked Brock if he wanted to come too, but he said he didn't. They both knew it was going to be a circus.

Brock was still uptight about Sam, still anxious for her to divorce him. He said he wouldn't believe it was for real until she told Sam, and they filed. But she kept promising it was going to happen right after the trial, and she meant it. She and Brock had been physically involved for eight months, and close friends for a lot longer, and she really loved him. But she and Sam had known each other for eighteen years, and loved each other for as long. She owed him something too, and although he didn't like it, she knew Brock understood that. But in spite of himself, and all their reasoning, Brock was extremely jealous. Alex was startled to realize it, but she also found it very touching.