CHAPTER 20: MARGARET ROWE

Sloane

She lived in a townhouse on the Upper East Side.

Of course she did.

Four stories. Dark brick. Window boxes with flowers that were probably tended by someone other than Margaret Rowe herself but that looked exactly like the kind of flowers a woman like Margaret Rowe would choose. Everything about the outside of the building said old money in the way that old money never had to announce itself because it had been there long enough that announcing it would have been redundant.

Beckett rang the bell.

I stood beside him in the kind of coat I had bought specifically for this evening because the one I usually wore to client dinners was fine for client dinners and this was not a client dinner and I had known it the moment he said my mother wants to have dinner like it was a simple thing when it was clearly not a simple thing at all.

He had noticed the coat when I came out of my room.

He had not said anything about it.

He had just looked at me for a moment in the way he looked at things he was not going to comment on and then said the car is downstairs and that was that.

The door opened.

Margaret Rowe was not what I expected.

I do not know exactly what I had been expecting. Something more formidable perhaps. More visibly strategic. The kind of woman who made you feel the assessment happening in real time.

She was elegant. That was the first thing. Not in an effortful way. In the way that some people are just built with a particular quality that has nothing to do with what they are wearing or how they are standing. She was in her early sixties. Dark hair going silver at the temples. Beckett's eyes exactly.

She looked at him first.

Then at me.

And something moved across her face that I was not fast enough to read before it was gone.

"Beckett," she said.

"Mom," he said.

She stepped back to let us in.

The inside of the house was warm.

Not decoratively warm. Actually warm in the way that houses are when they have been lived in properly for a long time. Books on actual shelves. Photographs on actual surfaces. A dog of indeterminate breed who appeared from somewhere and investigated my shoes with the focused attention of someone doing a thorough job.

"That is Archie," Margaret said. "He is rude to everyone initially. You will be old news by dinner."

"I have been investigated by worse," I said.

Something moved at the corner of her mouth.

We went through to a sitting room. She poured drinks without asking what we wanted which was either confidence or control and was probably both. Whiskey for Beckett. White wine for me which she had somehow known or guessed correctly.

We sat.

Archie settled on Beckett's foot which appeared to be his standard position.

"So," Margaret said. Looking at me directly with Beckett's eyes. "Sloane Mercer."

"Margaret Rowe," I said.

A pause.

Then she almost smiled. "You are not going to be easy are you."

"Probably not," I said.

She looked at Beckett. "I like her."

Beckett looked at his whiskey. "You have known her for four minutes."

"I knew within thirty seconds whether I was going to like someone when I was twenty two," she said. "I am sixty three now. It takes less time." She looked back at me. "My son has not brought anyone to this house in five years. You understand that means something."

"Margaret," Beckett said quietly.

"I am not embarrassing you," she said. "I am being honest with her. There is a difference." She looked at me. "He would not have brought you here if you were not real. Whatever the arrangement started as. You are real now. I can see that."

The sitting room was quiet.

Archie made a small sound in his sleep on Beckett's foot.

"I appreciate that," I said carefully.

"But," she said.

"But I would like to know what you get out of it," I said. "You arranged this. You were part of the decision to approach my father. I would like to understand your reasons."

Beckett looked at me.

I did not look at him.

Margaret looked at me for a long moment.

Then she set her glass down.

"Richard Calloway's comment at that dinner eight months ago was the starting point," she said. "That is true. But it was not my primary reason."

"What was your primary reason."

She looked at her hands for a moment. Then up at me.

"Beckett has been disappearing since Daniel died," she said quietly. "Not visibly. Not in ways that most people would notice. But I am his mother and I have been watching him disappear for five years and I did not know how to stop it." She paused. "I thought if there was someone. Someone real. Someone he could not manage or keep at arm's length because she simply would not allow it." She looked at me. "I thought it might stop the disappearing."

The room was very quiet.

I did not look at Beckett.

I could feel him beside me not moving.

"You used my father's debt," I said.

"Yes," she said. "That is not something I am proud of."

"But you did it anyway."

"Yes."

I sat with that for a moment.

"Does it matter," she said carefully. "Given where things are now. Does the how of it still matter."

I thought about it honestly.

"It matters that you know it was wrong," I said. "Not for my sake. For yours."

She held my gaze.

"I know," she said. Simply.

I nodded once.

And that was enough.

Dinner was in the dining room.

A table set for three. Food that Margaret had clearly made herself which surprised me and which she caught me being surprised about.

"I have cooked my own dinners my entire adult life," she said. "Money does not change whether you find it satisfying to feed people."

"Daniel cooked," Beckett said.

It was the first time he had said it easily. Without managing it first. Just a fact offered at a dinner table the way facts are offered when you are somewhere safe enough to offer them.

Margaret looked at him.

Something passed across her face. Soft and quick.

"He did," she said. "Badly at first. Then quite well."

"Roast chicken," Beckett said.

"Among other things." She looked at me. "Did he tell you about the beef bourguignon."

"The hate crime against French cuisine," I said.

Margaret laughed.

It was a real laugh. Not the practiced social kind. The kind that comes out before you decide to let it.

Beckett was looking at his plate with the expression he wore when something had caught him off guard in a way he did not entirely mind.

We ate.

The three of us around the table with Archie underneath it waiting for something to fall and the city outside the window doing its evening thing and Daniel somewhere in the conversation the way he was always somewhere in the conversation now. Present without being painful. Remembered without being mourned in the sharp way.

Margaret asked me about my work. Not politely. Actually. She had specific questions about corporate litigation that told me she had done research before tonight.

I answered them directly.

She pushed back on two of my answers.

I held my ground on both.

She looked pleased about that in a way she did not try to hide.

After dinner we went back to the sitting room.

At some point Beckett went to find something in another room and it was just Margaret and me and the dog and the quiet.

She looked at me.

"Can I ask you something directly," she said.

"You have been asking me things directly all evening," I said.

"More directly than that."

I waited.

"Are you going to stay," she said. "When this is over. When whatever is happening with Strand is resolved and the contract arrangement reaches its end and there is nothing external holding you in his orbit anymore." She held my gaze. "Are you going to stay."

I looked at her.

At Beckett's eyes looking back at me from his mother's face.

"Yes," I said.

She held my gaze for a moment.

Then she nodded once.

The nod of a woman who had asked a question she needed the answer to and had gotten it and was going to hold it carefully.

Beckett came back into the room.

He looked at the two of us.

"What did I miss," he said.

"Nothing important," Margaret said.

I looked at my wine glass.

But I was smiling.

And Margaret saw it.

And she smiled too.

Just the two of us for a moment knowing something he did not.

Which was the first time I had felt like I belonged somewhere in his world that had nothing to do with the arrangement or the contract or any of the external architecture that had built the situation.

Just a woman and her son's mother sharing a quiet moment over something true.

That was new.

That was very new.

And it felt exactly like something that was going to last.

In the car on the way home Beckett was quiet.

Not the closed off quiet. The thinking quiet.

After a while he said: "What did she ask you."

"When you left the room."

"Yes."

I looked out the window at the city going past.

"She asked if I was going to stay," I said.

He was quiet.

"What did you say," he said.

I looked at him.

"What do you think I said," I said.

He held my gaze for a moment.

Then he reached over and took my hand on the seat between us.

I turned my hand over and held his.

We rode the rest of the way home in the quiet.

His hand around mine.

The city outside.

And something settled and certain sitting in my chest that had not been there three weeks ago and that I was not going to question anymore.

I had answered Margaret Rowe's question.

I had answered it honestly.

And I had meant every word.