Chapter 6 - The Guests Who Had More to Lose Than Reputation
Not every woman at Eleanor’s dinner had been merely a spectator.
Two served on Bellamy-affiliated nonprofit boards.
One was married to a Great Lakes subcontractor.
Another had approved foundation grants routed through organizations that later paid Great Lakes.
The forensic accountants began interviewing them.
Their stories were remarkably similar.
Eleanor handled the details.
Julian said everything had been cleared.
Clara was difficult.
Sebastian was too busy to understand how much his mother did for the family.
Nobody admitted knowingly participating in fraud.
Several admitted laughing while Clara was beneath the table.
That part required no accountant.
Clara’s humiliation spread through Chicago’s wealthy philanthropic circles once one guest told another.
She stopped attending public events.
Not from shame.
From exhaustion.
Her due date was five weeks away.
Her obstetrician warned that stress was pushing her blood pressure upward.
Sebastian asked her to move back home.
She refused.
“I can keep Mom out.”
“That isn’t the only reason I left.”
He sat across from her hotel suite.
“What else?”
“You.”
The answer hurt.
Clara continued.
“I told you your mother was using my professional background in ways I didn’t understand.”
“When?”
“At Christmas.”
Sebastian remembered.
Clara had mentioned Eleanor asking strange questions about hospital compliance procedures.
He had joked that Eleanor was probably trying to impress donors.
“In February I told you Julian wanted my old résumé.”
Sebastian remembered that too.
He thought Julian was helping Clara return to work after the baby.
“In April I told you someone from your legal department thanked me for a review I never performed.”
He had not remembered that.
Clara had mentioned it during dinner while Sebastian answered emails from Boston.
He told her to forward it.
She had.
He never opened the message.
“I kept thinking each thing was too small to interrupt your important work,” Clara said. “Because you taught me your company was always the important work.”
Sebastian looked down.
The marriage did not become unsafe in one dinner.
The dinner simply made his neglect impossible to romanticize.
Clara had a blind spot too.
She admitted it.
She kept trying to win Eleanor’s approval.
She accepted invitations she dreaded.
She allowed comments about her background because confronting them made Sebastian defensive.
She signed one foundation acknowledgment without reading all the attachments because refusing every request made her feel paranoid.
“I should have stopped trying to prove I belonged,” she said.
Sebastian shook his head.
“You shouldn’t have needed to prove it.”
“That’s true.”
It was not forgiveness.
But it was the first sentence from him she did not need to correct.
Then Rebecca called.
Investigators had discovered that Julian was not merely helping Eleanor hide old payments.
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He had personally negotiated the Hartwell acquisition.
And Great Lakes was scheduled to receive another forty-eight million dollars the day after closing.
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