I typed, "I'm not asking you to come home. I'm asking you to protect your money." Before I could send it, another notification appeared stating that my message could not be delivered. I tried calling once, heard the line go straight to voicemail, and understood she'd blocked my number. I put the phone face down on the table. The door was closed, and she'd closed it from the inside.
For the next hour I felt angrier than I had when she left. On Thursday I had been too stunned to react fully, but now I could picture James reading my warning over her shoulder, supplying the exact words she'd sent back, turning me into the jealous ex-husband in whatever story he needed. I wanted to tell her that fear and jealousy were not the only possible reasons a person asked questions. Sometimes someone knew a concrete fact and was trying to keep you from walking into it. But explaining that would have meant fighting for the right to protect a woman who no longer trusted me enough to hear a sentence through to the end.
I took a long walk around the neighborhood instead. The lawns I normally noticed professionally passed by in a blur. At the corner, an older man was struggling to pull a heavy trash bin up his driveway, so I helped him without really thinking. He thanked me and offered a joke about the weight of fallen leaves. For a few minutes my life consisted of a simple task that had a visible beginning and end, and I realized how desperately I missed that kind of certainty.
The next morning Dana called. Clare's lawyer had sent a revised proposal for the settlement, and Dana wanted me to hear one specific detail before she responded. Clare was requesting that her entire agreed payment be wired immediately upon signing, not to a personal bank account but to a business account belonging to Whitaker Cellars. The name sounded like the sort of small company people imagine on the sign outside a charming wine shop. In reality, from what Rachel had shown me, it seemed to be a name James used while describing a business he had not yet created.
"Did you say Whitaker?" I asked.
"Yes. Do you recognize it?"
"That's James's last name. He calls it a wine bar. Rachel says there's no lease."
Dana paused. I could hear pages shifting on her desk. "Then there's no reason for us to authorize a payment directly to that account. If Clare is owed money under a signed agreement, she should receive it in an account under her own control. What she does afterward is a separate matter."
I asked whether the change was legal to insist upon. Dana said she could negotiate the mechanics and consult Clare's lawyer, who should also be concerned about a nonparty controlling a settlement payment. She would not pretend to have veto power over Clare's spending after the money arrived, but she