Chapter 7: What Crane Called to Offer
He called at eight-seventeen that evening.
I was in the kitchen when Grace rang.
I could hear the particular quality of her voice — the one that meant she had something to report and was deciding how to frame it.
"Crane called," she said.
"I know.
What did he offer?"
"He opened at forty percent of the assessed marital estate, excluding the Nevada LLC on the grounds that it was a — and I'm quoting again — 'pre-dissolution business venture.'"
I set down the glass I was holding.
"He wants to exclude the sixty-three thousand dollars."
"He does."
"After we showed him the transfer records."
"After we showed him the transfer records." A pause.
"He's testing the floor.
Seeing how low he can open before we react."
"What did you say?"
"I told him I'd convey the offer and that I expected a call back tomorrow with something serious." Grace's voice stayed even.
"He also said — and this is the part I want you to hear — that his client is prepared to contest the trust addendum in court if we don't reach an agreement.
He used the word 'protracted.'"
"He's threatening a long fight."
"He's threatening the cost of a long fight.
The attorney fees, the time, the stress." A pause.
"It's a pressure tactic.
He knows the addendum is solid.
But litigation is expensive even when you win, and he's betting you'd rather settle than spend two years in court."
I leaned against the counter.
"Would we win?"
"On the addendum?
Yes.
On the Nevada LLC?
Almost certainly yes — hidden assets with documented transfers are very difficult to defend." Grace paused.
"But Crane is right that it would take time.
And he knows that."
"What do you recommend?"
"I recommend we counter at seventy-two percent of the full marital estate, including the Nevada LLC valued at its documented transfer total, plus the jewelry, plus an additional sum representing the dissipation of marital assets." She said the number.
I was quiet for a moment.
"That's a large number."
"It's the correct number," Grace said.
"He hid money, Olivia.
He used your joint finances to fund another life.
The law takes a dim view of that, and Crane knows it.
The question is whether David knows it well enough to stop fighting."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then we file the Nevada LLC documentation with the court, and a judge decides." A pause.
"Judges also take a dim view of hidden assets."
I looked out the kitchen window.
Dark outside now.
The oak tree was just a shape against the sky.
"Send the counter," I said.
"Tonight?"
"Tonight."
Grace was quiet for a second.
"All right." The sound of her typing.
"I'll send it with a forty-eight-hour response window.
That gives him enough time to panic properly."
"Grace."
"Yes?"
"Thank you.
For all of it."
A pause — longer than her usual ones.
"You did the work," she said.
"You documented everything.
You kept your head.
You gave me something to work with." Another pause.
"A lot of women come in here and they're so shocked, so hurt, that they can't think clearly for months.
You walked in here thinking clearly from day one."
"I had time to get used to it before I came to you."
"I know.
That's what I mean." Her voice was quieter now.
"Go get some sleep.
I'll call you when he responds."
I hung up and stood in the kitchen for a while.
The house was very quiet.
It had been quiet since he'd moved his things to his brother's place the week after being served — a process that had taken two hours and had involved him standing in the bedroom doorway asking me twice if I was sure, and me saying yes both times without looking up from the book I was holding.
I hadn't been reading the book.
But I hadn't looked up.
I made tea I didn't drink and went to bed at ten and lay in the dark listening to the house settle around me, and I thought about forty percent, and seventy-two percent, and a restaurant in Nevada, and a woman who had stood on my porch with her hand on her hip like she'd already won something.
She'd given me the phone call.
The phone call had given me the screenshot.
The screenshot had given me the leverage that turned forty percent into a conversation about seventy-two.
I thought about that for a while.
Then I slept.
Crane called Grace back in thirty-one hours.
He didn't offer seventy-two.
He offered sixty-one, with the Nevada LLC included at a reduced valuation.
Grace called me immediately.
"He blinked."
"What does sixty-one mean?"
"It means he's moved twenty-one points in thirty-one hours.
It means David has seen the math and he doesn't want a judge to see it." A pause.
"It also means there's more room."
"How much more?"
"I think we get to sixty-eight.
Maybe sixty-nine." Grace paused.
"There's one more thing.
Crane mentioned — carefully, almost as a side note — that David would want the settlement to include a non-disclosure clause.
Mutual."
I sat up straighter.
"He wants me to stay quiet."
"He wants both parties to stay quiet.
But yes — the request is coming from his side."
"Why?"
Grace was quiet for exactly three seconds.
"Because the Nevada LLC isn't just a restaurant, Olivia.
I think there are other investors.
People who don't know their money was mixed with marital funds." A pause.
"If that becomes public, his problems get considerably larger than a divorce settlement."
The kitchen felt very still.
"How much larger?" I said.
"That," Grace said carefully, "is a question for a different kind of attorney.
But it does change our position on the non-disclosure clause."
I understood what she was saying.
"We don't sign it," I said.
May you like
"Not yet," Grace said.
"Not for sixty-one."
