I didn't know either. There was a time I could have explained almost anything to Vanessa by finding the right words and drawing a picture on a napkin. Lately, whenever I tried to explain what I wanted from our marriage, she heard an argument against the life she thought she deserved. It saddened me to realize that even the truth about Julian might sound like jealousy coming from me.
The next morning a courier brought an envelope to the house. The letterhead belonged to Kesler's office, and the document inside was called a nonbinding commercial settlement proposal. Rhodes Capital offered to purchase all fourteen Canal Street parcels from the Thornton Family Land Trust at sixty percent of their independently appraised value, with closing subject to the usual approvals. In return, Vanessa would withdraw her disputed claim against the trust, and the parties would seek to resolve other disagreements.
The offer expired at five o'clock six days later. The hearing on the emergency restriction was in five days, which meant I would have less than a day after the court's first decision to accept the proposed sale before the deadline passed. I stood on the porch and read that schedule three times. Outside, a neighbor washed his car, and a child rode past on a bicycle with a playing card clicking against its spokes.
At forty cents off every dollar, the discount was substantial. The trust could survive such a sale, but the transaction would surrender land my father had assembled carefully over decades. More importantly, a sale under that pressure would require me to persuade other people with interests in the trust that accepting a steep discount was in their best interest. I couldn't do that honestly just because I wanted my life to become quiet again.
I brought the letter to Constance. She read it, then laid it beside the investor deck Frank had supplied. The twenty-month-old presentation treated the Canal Street land as effectively secured, and now the proposed settlement offered a path to acquire it at a deep discount during an unrelated family dispute. The sequence was troubling, but we still had to separate suspicion from what the documents could prove.
"This looks less like a land offer than an attempt to purchase peace," I said.
"That's one interpretation," Constance answered. "The other is that he sees a seller under pressure. Either way, it tells us he needs the property more badly than his public presentations suggest. You are not obliged to accept an offer simply because it has an expiration date."
For a moment I considered taking it. I could picture the legal dispute ending, Ray calling me back to Eastgate, the newspaper finding another headline, and the old trust settling into a smaller but manageable future. I would no longer have to wonder who had been told what at dinner or what Julian might file next. The relief was so vivid that I felt ashamed of wanting it.
Sunday I took every notebook from the study shelves and stacked them on the floor. I sorted tax binders, roof warranties, inspection photographs, and twenty years of pocket books by the dates printed on their covers. The notebook from the year before the storm was there, and the one from the year after. The one I needed was not.