“Pull the net” had been our code since I was a girl. We used to fish at dawn in the summers after my mother died. Sometimes we’d wait in absolute silence, watching the line, watching the current, until the right moment came. Don’t yank too early, he taught me. Let them think they’re free. Then pull the net.
At the gala, the room glittered with money and old vanity. Investors who had ruined neighborhoods stood shoulder to shoulder with politicians who claimed to protect them. Crystal chandeliers burned overhead. White-jacketed servers kept the champagne flowing. There were flowers flown in from Holland and table arrangements so elaborate they should have had their own security detail.
I sat beside Prescott at the head table and barely existed to him. He spent most of dinner laughing too hard at Adeline’s insults. Adeline wore a diamond necklace I knew had been purchased with misallocated company funds diverted from an employee benefits account. Every time those stones caught the light I saw not beauty but fraud.
Across from Adeline sat her husband, Warren, quiet and tired in a way that went deeper than sleep. He was the only person to marry into that family and somehow retain a conscience. A thoracic surgeon raised in Birmingham, Alabama, he had earned every inch of his life through work so difficult and real it made their entire world of inheritance and cocktail chatter look paper-thin. Randolph tolerated Warren in public because it looked respectable. In private he called him aggressively self-important. Adeline spent money Warren earned with his hands while complaining that surgery had made him emotionally distant.
Warren met my eyes once across the table that evening, and in that look I saw recognition. Not of the files or the money or the plan. Of the exhaustion. Of the daily erosion that happens when people decide you are useful but not worthy.
Then Randolph stood. The room quieted immediately. A silver spoon struck a crystal glass. He smiled at the audience the way emperors in bad plays smile before sentencing somebody.
He thanked the crowd for their loyalty. He praised Prescott. He praised himself. Then he turned toward me, and that pulse in my throat that always started when he chose me as the evening’s sacrifice began to beat.
“Tonight,” he said, “we also celebrate my son’s generosity.”
Soft laughter. Anticipation.