“The bank notified me.”
I looked at Baxter.
“How did you get my card?”
His eyes dropped.
“When I helped you with that insurance payment last year,” he said. “You gave it to me. I made a copy. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
He did not answer.
“In case you needed to take a quarter million dollars from me?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
Whitney turned on him.
“You told me he agreed.”
Baxter’s face tightened.
“I lied.”
Her anger shifted direction instantly.
“You got me involved in this?”
“I thought he’d understand once it was done.”
I looked at my son, and for one moment, the showroom disappeared. I saw him at eight years old, running across the yard in a baseball cap, glove too big for his hand, laughing because he had caught a ball I had thrown gently enough for him to win. I wondered where that boy had gone, and whether I had been too busy building a company to notice when he left.
Then the present came back.
The black Maserati gleamed beside us like a monument to everything wrong.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want excuses. I want you both to leave and think about what you did. Do not call me until you are ready to tell the truth.”
I walked out before either could answer.
Three hours later, my doorbell rang.
I took my time.
Baxter and Whitney stood on the porch. He looked smaller than he had at the dealership. Whitney looked angry beneath a tight layer of restraint.
“Can we come in?” Baxter asked.
I stepped aside.
In the living room, they remained standing until I pointed to the couch. I sat in Elizabeth’s reading chair, the one by the window, and waited.
“Dad,” Baxter began, “we want to apologize.”
“For what exactly?”
He glanced at Whitney.
“For making a copy of your card.”
“And?”
“For trying to use it without permission.”
“For trying to take two hundred thirty-five thousand dollars from me,” I said.
Whitney’s eyes flashed.
“That is not fair. The card was blocked. The money wasn’t even spent.”
I looked at her.
“Is that your standard now? That a wrong thing does not matter if it fails?”
She crossed her legs sharply.
“We made a mistake.”
“No,” I said. “A mistake is forgetting a birthday. This took planning.”
Baxter lowered his head.
Whitney leaned forward, impatience breaking through her manners.