Meredith said, “A woman I play tennis with at the Everglades. She’s a consultant with Hackman Marr.”

“Hackman Marr?” Freddy said, sounding interested.

“Yes,” Meredith said. “And she went to Princeton, graduated in eighty-five. I had lunch with her today. I really like her.”

“I’m sorry,” Freddy said.

“Sorry about what? You mean you won’t take her on?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t take investors because we ‘really like’ them,” Freddy said. “We take them on for other reasons.”

“What other reasons?” Meredith asked. “She said she has nine million dollars.” She handed Freddy Amy’s business card. “Will you please think about it? For me, please?”

“For you, please? All right, yes,” Freddy said. “I’ll think about it.”

And voilà! Freddy called Amy Rivers himself and invited her to invest, and Amy sent Meredith a huge bouquet of flowers. They became great friends, playing tennis and meeting for lunch, recommending books, talking about their kids. Amy never again mentioned Delinn Enterprises, Freddy, or her money. And then, of course, there was no money. Amy Rivers lost everything.

Meredith looked at Connie. “I could tell you dozens of stories like that.”

Connie wasn’t sure how to respond. She and Wolf, too, had been investors. She thought that all this talk about other investors might lead to an uncomfortable discussion of their own situation-but Connie was spared this by the knock at the door. It frightened her at first, and it certainly frightened Meredith, but then Connie realized it must be the power washer, and she hurried to greet him.


The man’s name was Danforth Flynn; he told Connie to call him Dan. He was about fifty, with the lean body of a long-distance runner and a permanent sunburn. Again, Connie felt self-conscious. This was the second time this morning that she had a handsome man show up to help her.

Dan Flynn regarded the front of the house and whistled.

“Did the chief explain?” she asked.

“He did.”

“Can you get it off?”

He approached the front of the house and touched a shingle that had been painted. He rubbed his fingers together. “I can,” he said. “What I want you to do is to go inside and close and lock all of the windows on this side of the house. This is going to take me a couple of hours, I’d guess. And it’s going to be loud.”

“No problem,” Connie said.

“Okay,” Dan Flynn said. “I’ll get started. The tank of my truck holds four thousand gallons of water, but this job is so big I may need to hook up to your outdoor spigot to fill my reserve tank. Can you show me where that is?”

“I can,” Connie said. “It’s around here.” She led him to the side of the house and showed him where her garden hose was coiled. He wasn’t looking at the house, however-he was looking at the view of the ocean.

“You have quite a spot,” he said. “In good old Tom Nevers. I forget how breathtaking it can be out here.”

“Yes,” she said. “The land had been in my husband’s family since the nineteen twenties, but we only built the house fifteen years ago. And then my husband died in two thousand nine, so now it’s just me.”

“Funny,” Dan said, still looking at the water. “My wife died in two thousand nine. Breast cancer.”

“Brain cancer,” Connie said.

They were quiet for a moment, and Connie couldn’t help but think of her friend Lizbet who had, for two and a half years, been encouraging Connie to go to a support group so she could meet people who were going through the same thing she was.

Connie looked at Dan Flynn and smiled. “I’ll go take care of those windows,” she said.

“Great,” he said.


Connie bounded into the house. She felt more energized than she had in months.

She closed the windows on the first floor and watched Dan move around his truck, turning knobs, pulling out a thick blue ridged hose. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and running shoes. He had a buzz cut, brown hair turning gray, and a day of growth on his face like that newly retired NFL quarterback, which she found sexy. Sexy? She couldn’t believe she was thinking this way.

Connie caught sight of herself in the mirror. She had lost a lot of sparkle in the past two and a half years-but did she really look so bad for fifty? Her hair was still strawberry blond, more strawberry in the winter, more blond in the summer. She had her mother’s good genes to thank for that because Veronica had gone to the grave at sixty-eight with a full head of natural red. Connie had green eyes, a light tan, some freckles, some sun spots. Her skin wasn’t great; she had never been able to stay out of the sun. She was out of shape although she was very thin from skipping meals. Her nails were a mess, and her eyebrows. She needed to start taking care of herself again. She needed to exercise.

Ha! All this in response to the cute power-washing guy. Meredith was going to die laughing.

Connie went upstairs to close the second-floor windows. Dan had started working. The noise was incredible; it sounded like the house was being attacked by fighter jets. Connie hurried to shut all the windows. She could see Dan Flynn bracing the hose against his hip, shooting a stream of water at the house that was moving so fast, it looked solid. Dan’s body was shaking like he was operating a jackhammer; all the muscles in his arms were popping. The whole thing was rather phallic.

“Meredith,” Connie said. “Come here, you have to see this.”

There was no response. Connie was pretty sure the paint was coming off. There were green puddles in the yard now, the color of radioactive waste.

“Meredith?” Connie called.

Connie finished with the windows facing the front of the house and, just to be safe, she shut the windows on either side of the house, even though those rooms would get murderously hot. The house had central air-conditioning-but, like the alarm system, Connie never turned it on.

She moved into the hallway. The door to Meredith’s room was shut. Connie remembered the blank look on her face as she sat at the table, and the way she recited the names of the investors. (She had committed nearly three thousand of the names to memory, she said, as a kind of penance. It was how she’d filled her days in the New York apartment after Freddy had been taken away.)

Connie had a bad feeling. She knocked on the door.

“Meredith?” she said. No answer. She could have been sleeping. Connie really wanted to respect Meredith’s privacy, just as she wanted her own privacy respected-it was the only way it was going to work with them living in the house together-but Connie was worried that Meredith would take pills or hang herself or slash her wrists with one of the disposable razors that Connie knew were under the sink in the bathroom.

“Meredith?” Connie said. No answer. Nothing. Just the percussive drone of the power washer.

She opened the door and gasped. Meredith was sitting on her bed, facing the door, wearing that same zombie-like expression. Her Louis Vuitton duffel bag was next to her on the bed.

“Jesus!” Connie said. “You scared me. What are you doing?”

She looked at Connie. “I have to leave.”

“No!” Connie said.

“Yes,” Meredith said. She stood up, grabbing her bag.

“You are not leaving,” Connie said. She tried to wrest the leather handles from Meredith, but Meredith held fast. She was small, but she was tough; Connie remembered her on the hockey field, gripping her stick, biting down ferociously on her mouth guard.

“I’m leaving,” Meredith said. “Your beautiful house was wrecked because of me!”

“It’s not wrecked,” Connie said. “Come see-this man named Dan Flynn is outside fixing it. The paint’s coming off. We’ll never even be able to tell it was there.”

“But it was there,” Meredith said. “CROOK. They think I’m him. They think I was in on it. They think I’m the one who stole their money. And I did in a way, didn’t I? Because I had four houses, a yacht, a jet, seven cars, jewelry, clothes, antiques-and where did the money for all that come from? Well, technically, I stole it, didn’t I?” She blinked, and Connie thought that this might be the thing that made Meredith cry, but behind her glasses, her eyes were dry. “But I had no idea. No idea. I thought Freddy was a genius. I thought he was beating the market, again and again and again. I was so…”

“Meredith-”

“Stupid! So blind! And no one believes me, and why should anyone believe me? I’m a smart woman with an Ivy League education. How could I not see something illegal was going on?” She glared at Connie. “Even you tried to tell me.”

That was correct; Connie had tried to tell her. But Connie was in too generous a frame of mind to revisit that. “You were blinded,” Connie said. “Blinded by love.”

“Is that an excuse?” Meredith said. “Is that going to get me off the hook with the FBI, Connie? Love?”

Connie didn’t know what to say.

“Do you believe I’m innocent?” Meredith said.

“Yes, Meredith. I believe you’re innocent.”

“And why is that? Why are you the only person in the whole country who believes I’m innocent?”

“Because I know you.”

“I knew Freddy,” Meredith said. “I thought I knew Freddy.” She raised her head. “I should never have called you to come get me. I’ve put you in danger. Look what happened to your house. I’m drowning, Connie, but I’m drowning alone. I won’t take you with me.”

“Meredith!” Connie said. She had to shout to be heard above the din of the power washer. “YOU’RE STAYING. I WANT YOU TO STAY. I’M NOT WILLING TO LET YOU GO.” She didn’t say, You have nowhere else to go, because it wasn’t about that. “I need you to stay for me, okay, not for you. I need a friend. I need companionship. And it has to be you. We’re going to put what happened behind us; we’re going to forget the things we said to each other. We need time for that. And we need to figure out how to prove you’re innocent. We need the world to see you as I see you.”