Chapter 7: The Dinner That Was Always Meant for Me
The business contact's name was Gerald Marsh.
Lauren sent the documents to Jason that same evening, as she'd promised.
Jason brought them to the kitchen table after Max was in bed, and we sat together and he walked me through eight months of work.
It had started, he said, the autumn before Max was born.
He'd been offered a partnership in a property fund — small, careful, built by two men he'd known since university.
He'd put in what he could.
Not much.
But he'd stayed in it quietly, year after year, reinvesting rather than drawing out, and the fund had grown.
"I kept thinking I'd tell you when it was worth telling," he said.
"And then it kept growing, and the moment kept moving, and—" He stopped.
"And it became a secret by accident," I said.
"Yes." He turned a page.
"And then when I thought you were leaving, I thought—if I could show you what I'd built, what it meant for your future, for Max's—" He looked up.
"I know that's not how it works.
I know you can't make someone stay with a spreadsheet."
"You'd be surprised," I said.
"I find spreadsheets very compelling."
He laughed.
A real one.
The first one in what felt like a long time.
I looked at the numbers on the page.
"Jason."
"I know."
"This is—"
"I know."
"Max could go anywhere for university."
"Yes."
"We could—" I stopped.
I thought about my sister.
About the conversation I'd been carrying alone since November.
"We could move.
If we needed to.
If someone needed us to be closer."
He looked at me carefully.
"Your sister," he said.
"She's not well.
She hasn't wanted to make it a big thing.
But she asked me, in November, whether we'd ever consider—"
"Claire." He reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want to ask you to give something up for a maybe."
He turned my hand over.
"That's what I did to you," he said.
"For eight months."
We sat with that for a moment.
"We're very stupid," I said.
"Profoundly," he agreed.
The dinner with Gerald Marsh happened the following Thursday.
Not as a surprise.
Not as a presentation.
Just dinner — the four of us, at a restaurant Jason had booked months ago and nearly cancelled twice.
Gerald was a quiet man in his sixties with good manners and a dry sense of humor.
He shook my hand and said, "Jason talks about you constantly.
I was beginning to think he'd invented you."
"He nearly convinced himself of something similar," I said.
Jason looked at his menu.
Gerald laughed.
Over the main course, Gerald mentioned, carefully, that the fund had an option to expand.
That there were decisions to be made in the next year.
That Jason's involvement had been significant and his voice would matter.
He looked at me when he said it, not just at Jason.
"It affects your family," he said simply.
"You should both understand it."
I thought about Patricia, who had spent eleven years waiting for me to need something and had never thought to offer anything.
I thought about the note in Max's pocket.
I thought about a red dress that was never a goodbye dress.
May you like
"Tell me how it works," I said to Gerald.
And he did.
