“That’s impossible,” Morgan said in defense of her employer. “He’s meticulous in his dealings.” And then she remembered the name on the list of directors that she had found disturbing since he had been indicted. But she still couldn’t imagine George doing what they were accusing him of. It had to be some kind of mistake.
She was allowed to leave the office at six o’clock, and was told not to return. The entire staff was under investigation, and had been dismissed. The office was closed, and their accounts had been seized. They returned her cell phone when she left the office, and when she exited the building, she felt like she was in a state of shock. She took a cab back to Hell’s Kitchen, and stopped to see Max at the restaurant. She desperately needed to see a friendly, familiar face. She burst into tears as soon as she saw him, and told him what had happened. He couldn’t believe it either. But it was all over the Internet and TV that night. George Lewis was under investigation, and more than likely would be indicted by the grand jury for stealing millions from his investors. Bail had been posted at ten million dollars in a federal arraignment, and he was expected to get out of jail that day.
Claire was stunned when she heard about it too. She wondered if that had anything to do with why he had dumped her, but she suspected the two events were unrelated and that he was a criminal, or a pathological liar. The lone wolf was a crook. The next morning she and Morgan sat in the kitchen reading the papers, too shocked to know what to say.
“It looks like I’m out of a job too,” Morgan said to Claire. She was panicked about her future, and had said as much to Max the night before. “Nobody is ever going to hire me after this.” There would always be some question if she had been part of the Ponzi scheme, but she truly had no idea about what he’d done.
Federal agents came to see her at the apartment, and questioned her again. She had already told them all she knew, and said it all again. And they questioned Max at the restaurant too, wanting to know what she had said to him about her job. And he told them about her asking him what he thought of the irregularities she’d found, and he had told her that he thought they were accounting errors, and she had agreed. But neither of them had suspected something like this, the theft of millions from his investors. And he had done it cleverly and well.
She didn’t know what to do with herself in the days after the office closed, and to keep her from losing her mind over it, and to keep her occupied, Max asked her if she would help him at the restaurant, and oversee his books. She was grateful for the distraction, and he offered to pay her a salary for doing it, which she wouldn’t accept. But she went to work with him every day. It was a terrible time for her, and she clung to him like a rock in a storm.
Claire’s mother arrived in the midst of the mess, and was shocked at what she read. He had sounded so perfect from Claire’s description of him, and turned out to be a crook, on a major scale.
“Thank God you weren’t still dating him when this happened,” she said to Claire. “Do you think he knew this was coming?”
“No, I don’t. Apparently, they’ve been monitoring him for months through the bank. Morgan says he had no idea, and neither did she. It’s been a terrible blow to her.” Morgan hadn’t been able to sleep, and was losing her hair, which was apparently a reaction to the trauma she was going through. She still didn’t know if they were going to indict her too. They had interviewed her several more times, and nothing was conclusive yet. And she couldn’t look for another job until she was cleared, and absolved of any guilt. Claire was sure they would find her innocent of any knowledge of what he’d done, but in the meantime, Morgan’s life was in limbo, her future uncertain.
—
Over coffee the morning after Sarah arrived, Claire asked her mother how her father had taken it when she left.
“He was shocked,” Sarah said quietly. “He never thought I’d do it. But I’m glad I did. It’s up to him now to figure out his life, without me. I need to take care of myself.” Claire had never heard her mother speak that way, and she was proud of her for doing it. She was stronger than Claire had ever dreamed, and it proved to her that you could pick up the pieces and start again at any age. It had been weeks since the breakup with George, and Claire was still reverberating from it, but it had turned out to be a blessing, given everything that was happening to him. And then the two women got to work. They had a lot to do.
With Valentina in hiding from a murderer, her boyfriend assassinated, George being indicted for federal crimes, his startling breakup with Claire, and then Claire being fired by Walter, two plainclothes policemen protecting Sasha, and Abby’s announcing she was leaving in March, and Sasha in June, the mood in the apartment was decidedly somber, despite Claire’s elation about starting her business, Sasha’s over her marriage, and Abby’s film.
Claire showed her mother the sketches she’d been working on since Christmas, and Sarah thought they were very good.
“When are we going to Italy?” her mother asked her, looking excited, and Claire smiled. This was going to be fun.
“Maybe next month, when we have enough designs for our first line. If we go in February, we should have samples by April, in time to take them to a trade show, and take orders for fall.” She knew how it all worked, as she explained the various aspects of the business to her mother, and they made a timeline of what they had to do. It was going to be a lot of work. After they met with the factory, they could establish their price point. Claire wanted to try and keep their prices down, while offering a high-fashion look, and it was going to be a challenge. But she finally had a sense of freedom to do the kind of designs she wanted to do, after being stymied by Walter for years.
As the weeks went by, her portfolio took shape, and she made an appointment at the factory for mid-February. And the week before they left, Morgan was informed there was no evidence that she’d been involved in George’s crimes, and she was free of any suspicion. It was an enormous relief. But they asked her to remain available for future meetings if they needed more information for the federal prosecutor’s case against George.
“To put it bluntly,” Morgan said to Max after the grand jury had cleared her, “George is in deep shit.” She realized now that she had never really known him, or what he was capable of. No one had. He was a classic sociopath, with no conscience about the people he had hurt, just as he didn’t care what he’d done to Claire, setting her up to trust him and believe him, while she lowered her defenses and became vulnerable to him, and then he walked away. Morgan found herself wondering now if he had planned it that way, just to hurt her, and Claire had thought of it too. If so, he was even sicker than they thought.
At the same time, Sasha was staying in touch with Lieutenant O’Rourke about her sister’s situation, but there was no news. He said they were talking to every informant they had, but no one knew anything. At least her sister was safe. But Sasha was tired of looking like a freak, and having two plainclothes cops follow her everywhere.
She and Alex were working harder than ever, and by the time Sarah and Claire left for Italy, they still hadn’t gone to Atlanta so Alex could meet her parents. They never got more than one day off at a time, but they were determined to get there before the wedding. And they hadn’t found a wedding planner either. Sasha had no idea where to look, or who to ask. Oliver finally found one for them, through a client whose daughter had just gotten married, but the wedding had cost a fortune, and she didn’t want to take advantage of her father unreasonably, no matter how nice he was about it.
“It’s a shame Valentina can’t find a decent guy. If you had a double wedding, maybe you could get a group rate,” Oliver teased her one night on the phone. She and Alex were going to meet with the wedding planner the next day. It was nice to be dealing with something pleasant for a change. All they talked about at the apartment now was George’s indictment, and Morgan being cleared. She had decided to keep helping Max with his books at the restaurant, and Max said she was a genius at it. From looking at the spr
eadsheets, she had spotted that the bartender was skimming money off the top. Max had confronted him with the evidence, the man had admitted it, and Max replaced him immediately. She was still planning to look for a job, but she wanted to regain her balance and composure before going to a headhunter and searching for something on Wall Street. She didn’t feel ready for that yet—what had happened was too shocking, and it was still in the media every day.
Valentina’s boyfriend’s murder, on the other hand, had disappeared without a trace. He was just another gangster who had been killed by his own kind. It had appeared in the paper the day after the murder, and not again. And the article had said that there had been a woman with him, but Valentina wasn’t mentioned by name, by police request, for the benefit of her safety. Sasha still had no idea where she was and hadn’t heard from her. There could be no communication between them, by police demand.
And she and Alex weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry when they met the wedding planner. She was British, her name was Prunella, and she looked more like an undertaker than a wedding planner, in a severe black suit, with her dyed jet-black hair pulled tightly back in a bun. Oliver had said she’d been a ballerina in her youth, but she looked like a prison guard to Alex, and he whispered to Sasha, when the woman left the room briefly, that she scared him to death.
“Maybe she runs a tight ship,” Sasha said hopefully, and she didn’t like her either. But they had no one else. The few they had heard about and checked out cost a fortune, and Prunella was only slightly cheaper. She asked them to describe their dream wedding, and they both agreed that small would be better, and said they wanted about a hundred guests.
“Are you sure?” she asked with a disapproving expression, and they nodded. Alex said that his parents had had a hundred people at theirs. And they had offered to hold the wedding in Chicago, with the reception at the house, but Alex and Sasha agreed that they wanted to be married in New York. “Do you have an idea of location?” she asked them. “You may already be too late for this June, and you may have to wait a year for a prime location.”
“We don’t want to wait a year,” Sasha said firmly, and Prunella raised an eyebrow with an unspoken question. “I’m not pregnant. But we’d like to get married this June,” Sasha said, looking the wedding planner in the eye.
“I’ve had quite a lot of pregnant brides recently,” Prunella said with a sniff. “Modern times. One of them went to the hospital from the reception. Do you want a garden setting? A restaurant? A hotel? Indoor, outdoor? Afternoon? Evening?” The options were dizzying, and they had come to no decisions when they left her home office on East Sixty-eighth Street.
“I can see why people go to Vegas,” Alex said, overwhelmed.
“Maybe we should do it in Chicago,” he said vaguely.
“Our friends are here,” Sasha reminded him. “I don’t want to get married in Atlanta either.”
When Oliver called Sasha to see how they’d liked her, she described the meeting and how unnerving it had been. Then she talked to him about what they should do.
“Nighttime weddings are more fun, and dressier,” he said. “What about someone’s home with a garden? Let me think about it. Do you want a church wedding?”
“Probably.” She liked the garden idea, particularly in June, but she couldn’t think of any, and then Oliver called her back the next day.
“I don’t know if it’s a crazy idea or not, but I know a woman with a beautiful roof garden on her penthouse on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. I’ve rented it from her before for clients, and she’s very particular about who she rents to. I’m not sure how she’d feel about a wedding. She owns the top two floors, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors complaining. She let us go pretty late for our event. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t ridiculous either. If you want, I’ll call her, and it’s not like a hotel where it’s booked years in advance. Do you have a date?”
“June fourteenth?” Sasha said hesitantly. It seemed like a good date to her, in warm weather, and before the Fourth of July weekend and people’s summer plans.
“I’ll let you know.” He called back ten minutes later, when she was on her way to work. She and Alex were on different schedules that day. “You’re in,” Oliver told her. “June fourteenth. Evening wedding. She said you can have a hundred and twenty people. You provide all the catering, flowers, band, etc. She provides the hall.” He quoted a price that seemed reasonable to both of them.
“It sounds perfect.” She was delighted.
“My clients loved it for their events. One was corporate, one was private—it worked for both.”
“I wish you were our wedding planner,” she said wistfully. He made everything so easy and had such great resources.
“I don’t. Weddings are a nightmare. I don’t want one. If I ever get married, I’ll go to the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas.”
“That’s what Alex said yesterday,” she said, sounding glum again.
“So should I book it?”
“Yes, I’ll tell Prunella.” She called her just before she got to the hospital, and told her they had a location.
“Then we need to send out save-the-dates immediately,” she said imperiously. “And you have to pick your invitations right away. They have to be printed now. Your wedding is only four months away. That’s practically tomorrow. We have work to do,” she said sternly.
“Could you send me a list of what we need to do?” Sasha asked, feeling as overwhelmed as Alex had the day before.
“I will as soon as you sign the contract.” She had given them a copy of it, and it required a large deposit, which Sasha wanted her father to approve, but hadn’t had time to send to him.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said meekly. Prunella scared her too.
“I could meet with you again today at four-thirty,” the planner said primly.
“I’ll be delivering babies until tomorrow. And I need to send the contract to my father for his approval.”
“Very well. You have no time to waste,” she reminded Sasha again as she arrived at work.
“I’ll get back to you soon,” Sasha promised, and then forgot about her as soon as she got to labor and delivery. They had four deliveries on hold, a midwife who was driving everyone crazy making demands for her patient, and a set of twins, preemies, coming in by ambulance. “Oh, happy days,” she said to Sally at the desk, as she ran to scrub up. “Do we have an anesthesiologist on the floor?”
“Not yet,” Sally answered as Sasha ran past her.
“Get two—it sounds like we’ll need them.” She could hear screaming coming from two of the rooms. Welcome to my world, she thought to herself. But this was so much easier than planning a wedding. She knew what to do here. Weddings were a mystery to her, and she had no mother to advise her. Muriel wouldn’t even discuss it with her. She walked into the first labor room two minutes later, and was just in time to tell the mother to push after she checked her.
“We’re at ten. Let’s go,” she said to the crying mother as she threw up, and then shouted at her husband and refused to push. “I want to see your little boy, don’t you?” Sasha said, smiling calmly at her, as the young woman nodded, and then grudgingly started to push as she screamed. She hadn’t wanted an epidural, determined to do it naturally, and now it was too late and she’d have to tough through it, and Sasha could tell it was a big baby. It wasn’t going to be easy. “We need another push here…again….” she told the struggling woman in labor. “One more…another one. You’re doing great.” She smiled at her as the woman continued to scream, and threw up again. It was a tough delivery that Sasha knew the woman would remember, and it would have been so much better with an epidural, but she had to work with what they had, a big baby, a crying mom, and no drugs. It took another hour of pushing, but the baby finally crowned, and then slid into her hands as she turned it, and then the mother was crying and laughing. The agony was over the minute the baby came out. “Good job, Mom!” Sasha praised her.
Sasha was so good at what she did, and loved it so much. It was a great feeling knowing she made a difference to people. She walked out of the delivery room half an hour later, after stitching the woman up, and rushed past the nurses’ station, as Sally called out to her.
“You’ve had three calls from some woman named Prunella,” she told her, and Sasha stared at her in disbelief.
“Is she kidding?”
“She told me I had to get you right away, and I said you were in the middle of a delivery. Was it urgent?”
“No, it wasn’t. She’s my wedding planner. It can wait.”
Sally laughed as Sasha disappeared into the next room, just as the woman having twins at thirty-four weeks was brought in on a gurney by paramedics. They had to bring in one of the attendings for her, Sasha couldn’t be everywhere at once. The paramedics signed her over and wished her luck.
It was one of those insane days when they delivered babies nonstop all day. She was there till midnight, and Alex was at the apartment when she got home at almost one. He was asleep in her bed, and he rolled over groggily and looked at her when he heard her come in.
“Prunella is mad at you. You didn’t call her back,” he said sleepily.
“Really? Tough. I was busy.” The Elvis Chapel was sounding better every day. She pulled off her scrubs, kicked off her clogs, and climbed into bed with him, and five minutes later, they were both asleep. Prunella could wait.
Chapter 19
Claire and her mother boarded the plane to Milan at JFK on Valentine’s Day. It seemed appropriate to Claire to spend it with her mother this year, and they were both excited about the trip. They were flying coach for the sake of their budget, but even that couldn’t spoil the fun for them. The plane was full of Italians anxious to get home, and as she listened to the conversations around her, with people next to her, or shouting over them to friends in other rows, Claire couldn’t help but remember the exquisite luxury of George’s plane and the trips they’d taken together, and the wonderful time they’d had. But now look where he was and who he had turned out to be. It was still hard to believe. First his shocking abandonment of her, and then the discovery of the crimes he had committed. He was clearly a man without a heart or a conscience, a perfect sociopath.
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