Chapter 9
Margaret resigned from the board.
Then, six months later, Daniel asked her to join again.
She stared at him.
“After everything?”
“My brother says you’re the only lawyer he knows who frightens accountants.”
Andrew looked offended.
“I said she was thorough.”
“You said terrifying.”
“I may have said terrifyingly thorough.”
Margaret accepted.
Julian cooperated fully with investigators.
He also stepped down from managing the family foundation.
For months he and Margaret barely spoke.
Their first real conversation happened on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Julian came to her apartment carrying a box.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Dad’s personal records.”
Margaret did not touch it.
“I don’t want more secrets.”
“Neither do I.”
They sat at the kitchen table.
“I kept thinking I was preserving him,” Julian said.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
Margaret looked toward the rain.
“And now?”
“I think maybe preserving someone exactly as they wanted to be remembered is another kind of dishonesty.”
Margaret nodded.
“Your father did good things too.”
“I know.”
“He was not only the worst thing he did.”
Julian looked at her.
“But we don’t have to pretend the worst thing didn’t happen.”
“No.”
It was not forgiveness yet.
But it was the first honest conversation they had held in years.
Sometimes that mattered more.
Andrew and Daniel had a harder road.
There were joyful mornings.
There were also painful ones.
Daniel occasionally became quiet when Andrew entered.
Old fear lived in the body even after the mind learned better.
Andrew never demanded that his brother trust him faster.
One afternoon, Daniel said, “You’re being annoyingly patient.”
“I have been told patience is a virtue.”
“By whom?”
“People I fired.”
Daniel laughed.
Then he became serious.
“I wasted years hating you.”
Andrew shook his head.
“They were stolen years. You didn’t waste them.”
“I believed Thomas.”
“You were sick.”
“I still believed him.”
Andrew leaned back.
“Danny, when Mom told me you were dead, I eventually believed her.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Neither of us knew what we didn’t know.”
That became the sentence they returned to.
Neither of us knew what we didn’t know.
It did not excuse everything.
It simply gave them somewhere to place the years without using those years as weapons against themselves.
One year after Ivy handed Andrew five dollars, the Mercers gathered at a small restaurant in Brooklyn.
Not Andrew’s expensive private dining room.
Ivy chose the place.
It had red booths, paper placemats, and chocolate milkshakes served in glasses too tall for her to finish.
Mrs. Elellanar came.
Rachel came.
Margaret came.
Daniel came.
Even Julian was invited, though he almost declined.
Daniel told him, “If I can sit beside Andrew after nine years, you can survive one dinner with your mother.”
Julian attended.
It was not a perfect family.
Half the people at the table were not related.
May you like
Two people were learning how to forgive each other.
Two brothers were learning each other again.
