Page 62 of Counting Backwards

“I can’t now,” he said, “but in a couple hours. Please tell me you can meet tonight.”

I sighed loudly, allowing Vance to hear it, but then agreed. “Just tell me when and where.”

“I’ll come to the apartment. Around eight thirty. I have to run.”

As the call disconnected, Vance sounded like he couldn’t stand another second of hearing my voice. It was a new wound at a difficult moment in our relationship, perhaps our complete unraveling.

***

When 9:00 p.m. rolled around and Vance still hadn’t appeared, I began to wonder if he’d changed his mind and no longer wanted to talk. A call letting me know as much might have been nice, but maybe such courtesy was simply too much to hope for with the way things were between us.

I was sitting on the couch with my computer in my lap, scrolling through websites about fetal development. I landed on a page that detailed an average baby’s growth from week to week, comparing the size of the fetus to various common items, mostly foods. Since I was just a few weeks along, our baby would only be the size of a grain of rice or a pomegranate seed. I smiled as I read that at this early stage, the baby would resemble a tadpole. Thinking of my offspring as a nascent amphibian was equal parts wonderful and gross. Reading further down the page, I learned that in order to hear the fetal heartbeat before twelve weeks, doctors would often perform a transvaginal rather than an abdominal ultrasound. I hadn’t realized that’s what I was in for when I scheduled my follow-up with Dr. LaRusso. Would Vance come to that appointment? The thought of him standing beside me reeking with disdain while a doctor maneuvered a wand inside my body brought new meaning to the wordawkward.

The sound of a key at the door startled me. When the door opened and I saw Vance’s face, I was hit with a wave of longing that nearly knocked the wind out of me.

He was dressed in black slacks and a blue shirt, the one patterned with tiny diamonds that I’d helped pick out at Bloomingdale’s the year before. The shadow along his jaw was dark, as was usual for this hour of the evening, but his eyes were bright. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he looked happy to see me.

“Hi,” I said stiffly, moving my laptop to the end table and standing. I didn’t approach him. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself or why I had risen from my seat in the first place.

“Hi,” he said, closing the door. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” His tone was harried but kind. “I have to tell you what happened at work today. Sit.” He motioned to the spot on the couch I’d just vacated.

“Okay...,” I said tentatively, lowering myself down again. He was acting like we were normal, like we weren’t in the middle of falling apart, like I shouldn’t feel as utterly wrecked as I did.

Instead of joining me on the couch, he sat on the large wooden coffee table across from me. There wasn’t much space between the table and the sofa, and his legs ended up flush against mine.

“So you know how I’ve been underwater on the Wagner deal?” We were at eye level with each other.

I nodded, even though I had only the vaguest sense of that deal.

“Well, I finally came up for air for thirty seconds today, and of course Arjun immediately asked me to be another set of eyes on some reports for him.”

Vance often joked about how Arjun, arguably the smartest person on their floor at work, was constantly asking for “a quickie second opinion.” Even though no one was more likely to understand the complex business or accounting issues at play than Arjun himself.

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at where our knees touched and wondering where this was going.

“They’re doing due diligence on some matters related to DeMarke.”

My eyes shot back up to his.

“He had financial statements,” Vance continued, “showing earnings at the different facilities they manage.” He took a breath. “DeMarke manages twenty-one facilities, but one number was out of sync with the others. The profit margin at Hydeford is 40 percent higher than all the other facilities DeMarke manages.”

“Wait.” I sat up straighter. “Hydeford is their most profitable facility?”

Vance nodded, almost frantically.

“I knew it!” I was suddenly on my feet again. “It’s the insurance payments! Why else would one detention center be getting so much more money than all the rest? The other facilities DeMarke runs have just as many inmates or more. So why would this one place have such a different economic outcome? They’re not just butchering people over there—they’re making a massive profit off it.”

“Jessa, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I doubted you,” he said, reaching for my arm and pulling me back into my seat. “I don’t know why I was so stubborn, why I kept insisting you had to be wrong. Maybe I’m just not used to seeing you charge ahead without needing my input.” He swallowed audibly, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his neck. “But I should have listened, Jess. You always knew.”

His hand landed on my leg, and the warmth of it seemed to spread all over my body. I allowed myself one brief moment to sink into a wave of relief at his about-face. Maybe things could still work out for us and I could be finished sleeping alone. But then my mind returned to the case. I had no time to linger on my feelings.

“I have to get on this, like, yesterday!” I turned back toward my laptop.

“Wait, Jess, just wait.” He reached for my arm to slow me down. “This could get me fired. You can’t know what I just told you. You have to find the information some other way, not from me.”

Right. I had put him in a difficult position at work after all.

“I get it. It’s fine. There must be other ways to find this information. A lot of it is probably publicly available, and whatever’s not, I should be able to access through discovery.”