Now, Connie had left for her date, dressed in a stunning pink and orange Herve Leger bandage dress that very few women even twenty years younger could pull off, and her new Vanessa Noel heels. She gave Meredith the novels that Meredith had requested from Bookworks-Connie had ridden her bike to Monomoy to get her car to go to the bookstore. She had made this effort because she felt guilty. Connie had also made Meredith supper: a chopped salad with hard-boiled eggs, bacon, blue cheese, avocado, and grilled shrimp. Before she left, Connie locked all the doors and set the alarm. Then she hugged and kissed Meredith good-bye, and when Dan’s Jeep pulled up, she disappeared out the front door.

Meredith felt resentful, mostly because Connie had left her nothing to complain about.


Alone, Meredith thought. Alone, alone.

The phone in the house rang, and Meredith gasped. She and Connie had watched too many scary movies as teenagers; all she could think was that someone out there knew she was alone. She forced herself to check the caller ID-because what if it was Connie or one of the boys?-and Meredith saw that it was the law firm.

She picked up the phone.

“Meredith, thank God.”

“Hi, Dev,” she said.

“I just called your cell phone three times, and I sent you a text. Did you get it?”

“No,” Meredith said. “I-”

“You need to keep your phone on, Meredith,” Dev said. “What’s the point in having it otherwise?”

Should she try to explain to him that by turning it off, she saved herself twenty-three and a half hours of worry about who was or was not calling her?

“Thank God you gave me the landline,” Dev said. “Because things are starting to happen.”

“Like what?” Meredith said. She sat on the very edge of the sofa. She couldn’t let herself get too comfortable.

“Well, I have good news and I have bad news.”

Meredith clenched her fists. “What?”

“The good news is from Julie Schwarz. The Feds have determined that this guy Deacon Rapp, the so-called legitimate trader who was fingering Leo, was, in fact, in on the Ponzi scheme himself.”

“You’re kidding!” Meredith said.

“He was trying to feed Leo up to the Feds in his place, which was a logical move since Leo is Freddy’s flesh and blood. But after examining the so-called hundred pieces of evidence, the Feds caught on to this guy. They have a paper trail on him now that’s miles long, and without his deposition, there’s nothing implicating Leo. Leo’s computer was clean, and they found no communication between Leo’s office and the fiends on the seventeenth floor.”

“Thank God,” Meredith said.

“Even better, they found this woman, Freddy’s supposed secretary on the seventeenth, Mrs. Edith Misurelli. They got her arriving at JFK from Rome and took her in directly for questioning. She said straight out that Leo Delinn had been denied access to the seventeenth floor, by… guess who?”

Meredith was shaking. “Who?”

“Your husband. Freddy forbade Leo from ever entering the offices where the dirty deeds were done. According to Mrs. Misurelli, Leo never once set foot on that floor.”

“Oh, my God,” Meredith said. She felt a wash of relief, like cool water over her burning concern. “So Leo is off the hook?”

“Unless something unforeseen comes out, yes. The Feds are finished looking at Leo. They’re looking at this Deacon Rapp kid who had thirty-one million bucks squirreled away. He was in cahoots with his uncle, who deposited the money in four banks in Queens.”

“So I can talk to Leo?” Meredith said. “I can call him?”

“Now for the bad news,” Dev said. “Leo has been cleared. And this pisses off the investors and their lawyers, why? Because they want to hold another Delinn accountable. So who are they going to focus on now?”

“Me,” Meredith said.

“You.”

She stood up. The other investors are clamoring for your head. She walked over to the bookshelves and stared at Wolf Flute’s collection of barometers. Oh, the hours Meredith had spent acquiring and collecting things, instead of worrying about her own freedom.

But Leo is free, she thought. Leo is free! She allowed the massive weight of those worries to slide off her shoulders, which felt amazing, but nothing felt as good as dropping the insidious nugget of doubt that Meredith herself had felt about Leo. She had never believed that he’d been involved in the Ponzi scheme, but she’d feared, deep down, that he might have known about it and been too loyal to his father to turn him in.

This mysterious woman, a secretary of Freddy’s that Meredith hadn’t even known existed, had provided the only palatable answer: Freddy had forbidden Leo from visiting the seventeenth floor.

In light of this new information, did Meredith care about her own fate? Hadn’t she said she would sacrifice herself if Leo was set free?

“That brings us to the sticking point,” Dev said.

“The fifteen million,” Meredith said. Her voice sagged. Hadn’t they gone over this? “Are you going to ask me about the fifteen million?”

“Do you have anything else to say about it?” Dev asked. “Anything?”

“No,” Meredith said.

“Are you sure?”

“I told them already,” Meredith said.

“Okay,” Dev said. “Then all you can do is to keep thinking of places where that money might be, where the Feds might look. But you shouldn’t contact Leo or Carver until you’re cleared. It’s more imperative now than ever, okay?” He paused. “Hey, but the good news is that Leo is free.”

Meredith closed her eyes. She had refused to say the words before, but she would say them now. “Yes,” she said. “That is good news.”


Meredith set down the phone. Leo was free. There would be a quiet celebration at Carver’s house tonight, possibly just Carver and Leo and Anais sharing a meal, listening to music, and laughing for the first time in months.

Meredith poured herself a glass of wine. She yearned to step out onto the deck, but she couldn’t risk the exposure. Leo was free, but she was still in peril, possibly more so than before. Meredith wished Connie were here. Meredith looked obliquely out the glass doors. She saw Harold’s dark head emerge in the smooth green glass of a cresting wave, then disappear. Only one seal.

Meredith’s new novels were lying on the table. She could allow herself the pleasure of cracking one open, but the experience would be wasted on her. There was too much to think about.


The Feds thought they knew her, the investors thought they knew her, the American media thought they knew her: Meredith Delinn, wife of financial giant Frederick Xavier Delinn, mother of two privileged sons, socialite. They thought she sat on boards, they thought she organized charity galas, they thought she shopped. And whereas she had indeed done those things, there had been other things as well. Worthy things.

Meredith had taught English at Samuel Gompers High School in the Bronx for five years. It had been hard work, frightening work, frustrating work-Meredith challenged any federal agent or any soft-handed cubicle-sitter at the SEC to give it a try. She had forced tenth graders to read; some of them she had taught to read. She had thrown Carson McCullers’s novel The Member of the Wedding at them. For some kids, the book was like a blanket over their heads-they couldn’t see a thing. But for some kids, that book was a bright portal that led them to other books. Meredith read a poem to her classes every day, and some days no one was listening-they were too busy talking about the Knicks or Hector Alvarez’s new Corvette or doing smack. And some days they said, We don’t give a shit about no red wheelbarrow or no white fucking chickens. But some days, Meredith read Gwendolyn Brooks or Nikki Giovanni, and more than half the class looked mildly engaged. “A Boy Died in My Alley” got a response of Hey, man, that’s like Lippy Magee getting knifed behind the free clinic. And Meredith said, “Okay, everybody take out a pencil.”

She made a pittance, she took the subway, she was exhausted when she got home to the apartment-and sometimes Freddy was still at work. When Meredith got pregnant, she worried as she rode the 6 train uptown, and she was more exhausted when she climbed the four flights of stairs with bags from D’Agostino’s. She thought about quitting, but then Freddy announced that he was leaving Prudential and starting his own hedge fund. Why should he be working so hard to make money for a huge corporation when he could be making money for himself?

Meredith stayed at Gompers another year, then another year after that. They needed the health insurance. Freddy was having a hard time making the new business fly. Meredith got pregnant again. They didn’t have space for another child, and they couldn’t afford to move.

One night, with her belly hugely swollen, and Leo, at eighteen months, wailing in his crib, and Freddy out with some potential investors, who in the end never seemed to want to invest, Meredith lay in the bathtub and cried. She thought of her father saying, Brilliant and talented, that girl can do no wrong. Had he been lying? And if he was telling the truth, then what on earth was she doing here?


Meredith drained her glass of wine and stared at her beautiful salad. Could she bring herself to eat anything?

It was getting dark, and Meredith knew she should turn on some lights, but she had the dreadful feeling that if she turned on the lights, the person who was watching her would see her in the illuminated room eating alone. She picked at the salad in the gathering dark-not because she was hungry, but because Connie had made it for her. Connie was such a good cook, a good friend, a good person. Meredith had said all those beastly things to her years ago, but Connie hadn’t mentioned it once. Meredith hoped Connie was having fun tonight; she and Dan would still be at dinner. If Meredith had a legitimate scare, she could still call Connie’s cell phone. She could call now, but not later.