Chapter 10: The Window Facing East
Three months after the settlement, Carol helped me repaint the living room.
She had strong opinions about the color, which I had expected, and we argued about it for twenty minutes in the paint aisle of the hardware store before agreeing on something we both called "almost right," which was, in the end, exactly right.
We painted on a Saturday.
Carol brought lunch.
We ate on the floor because the furniture was pushed to the center of the room, and we talked about things that had nothing to do with Mark — her daughter's school play, a book she was reading, a trip she was thinking about taking in the spring.
At one point, she looked at the half-painted wall and said, "It's a good color."
"It is," I said.
"The room feels different."
"It does."
She looked at me.
"You feel different."
I thought about that honestly.
"I feel like myself," I said.
"I forgot what that felt like."
She reached over and squeezed my hand once, briefly, and then went back to painting.
The senior partner role had settled into something real by then.
The first months had been an adjustment — more responsibility, longer hours in a different way, decisions that landed on my desk and stayed there.
But it was mine.
Every part of it was mine, built from fourteen years of work that no one had been able to take away, no matter how hard they had tried.
Richard stopped by my office one afternoon in early spring.
He knocked on the open door, which he never did — he usually just walked in.
"Got a minute?" he said.
"Always."
He sat down across from me.
He looked at the window for a moment — the one that faced east, the one I had specifically requested because the morning light was good.
"I want to say something I should have said sooner," he said.
"When Mark came to see me.
When he sent those letters.
I should have told you immediately.
I chose to handle it myself, and that was wrong.
You deserved to know."
I looked at him.
"Why didn't you?"
"I thought I could manage it without making things harder for you.
I thought I was protecting you." He paused.
"I was wrong about that.
You didn't need protecting.
You needed the truth."
"Yes," I said.
"I did."
"I'm sorry," he said simply.
I nodded.
"I know."
He stood up.
At the door, he stopped.
"For what it's worth," he said, "the board has never once questioned the promotion.
Not after everything came out.
Not even close."
He left.
I turned back to the window.
The city was doing what it always did.
Moving.
Continuous.
Indifferent to individual stories, which was, I had come to understand, one of its kindnesses.
I made coffee for one.
Set the second cup back in the cabinet without thinking about it.
Sat down at my desk in the morning light.
Fourteen years.
Three rounds of interviews.
One dinner that was supposed to break me.
It didn't.
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