“Sam was always good at protecting you.” Meg heard a tiny flare of bitterness in her voice.
“Yeah.” Claire paused, drew in a breath. Meghann knew what her sister was doing. Regrouping, climbing to softer, safer ground. “I’m going to Lake Chelan,” she said at last.
“The yearly trip with the girlfriends,” Meghann said, thankful for the change in subject. “What do you call yourselves? The Bluesers?”
“Yeah.”
“You all going back to that same place?”
“Every summer since high school.”
Meghann wondered what it would be like to have a sisterhood of such close friends. If she were another kind of woman, she might be envious. As it was, she didn’t have time to run around with a bunch of women. And she couldn’t imagine still being friends with people she’d gone to high school with. “Well. Have fun.”
“Oh, we will. This year, Charlotte—”
The intercom buzzed. “Meghann? Mrs. Monroe is here.”
Thank God. An excuse to hang up. Claire could talk forever about her friends. “Damn. Sorry, Claire, I’ve got to run.”
“Oh, right. I know how much you love to hear about my college dropout friends.”
“It’s not that. I have a client who just arrived.”
“Yeah, sure. Bye.”
“Bye.” Meghann disconnected the call just as her secretary showed May Monroe into the conference room.
Meghann pulled the headset off and tossed it onto the table, where it hit with a clatter. “Hello, May,” she said, walking briskly toward her client. “Thank you, Rhona. No calls, please.”
Her secretary nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.
May Monroe stood in front of a large multicolored oil painting, a Nechita original entitled True Love. Meghann had always loved the irony of that; here, in this room, true love died every day of the week.
May wore a serviceable black jersey dress and black shoes that were at least five years out of date. Her champagne-blond hair fell softly to her shoulders in that age-old easy-care bob. Her wedding ring was a plain gold band.
Looking at her, you would never know that her husband drove a jet-black Mercedes and had a regular Tuesday tee-time at the Broadmoor Golf Course. May probably hadn’t spent money on herself in years. Not since she’d slaved at a local restaurant to put her husband through dental school. Though she was only a few years older than Meghann, sadness had left its mark on May. There were shadowy circles under her eyes.
“Please, May, sit down.”
May jerked forward like a marionette who’d been moved by someone else. She sat in one of the comfortable black suede chairs.
Meghann took her usual seat at the head of the table. Spread out in front of her were several manila file folders with bright pink Post-it notes fanned along the edges of the paperwork. Meghann drummed her fingertips on the stack of papers, wondering which of her many approaches would be best. Over the years, she’d learned that there were as many reactions to bad news as there were indiscretions themselves. Instinct warned her that May Monroe was fragile, that while she was in the midst of breaking up her marriage, she hadn’t fully accepted the inevitable. Although the divorce papers had been filed months ago, May still didn’t believe her husband would go through with it.
After this meeting, she’d believe it.
Meghann looked at her. “As I told you at our last meeting, May, I hired a private investigator to check into your husband’s financial affairs.”
“It was a waste of time, right?”
No matter how often this scene played and replayed itself in this office, it never got any easier. “Not exactly.”
May stared at her for a long moment, then she stood up and went to the silver coffee service set out on the cherry wood credenza. “I see,” she said, keeping her back to Meghann. “What did you find out?”
“He has more than six hundred thousand dollars in an account in the Cayman Islands, which is under his own name. Seven months ago, he took almost all of the equity out of your home. Perhaps you thought you were signing refinance documents?”
May turned around. She was holding a coffee cup and saucer. The porcelain chattered in her shaking hands as she moved toward the conference table. “The rates had come down.”
“What came down was the cash. Right into his hands.”
“Oh my,” she whispered.
Meghann could see May’s world crumbling. It flashed through the woman’s green eyes; a light seemed to go out of her.
It was a moment so many women faced at a time like this: the realization that their husbands were strangers and that their dreams were just that.
“It gets worse,” Meghann went on, trying to be gentle with her words, but knowing how deep a cut she’d leave behind. “He sold the practice to his partner, Theodore Blevin, for a dollar.”
“Why would he do that? It’s worth—”