One thirty, eastern standard time, ten thirty on the West Coast. Jen and the kids will be finished opening presents but not yet headed to the Park Tavern. He should call, despite his shame. She must be thinking he isn’t at all the man she married.
Just then, a call comes in from the disposable cell phone of Bucky Larimer. Patrick wants to throw his phone into the fire, but instead he stands, opens the front door, and steps out into the cold day to take the call.
“What?” he says.
“Man, thank God you finally answered,” Bucky says.
“What,” Patrick says, “do you want?” There is a way in which he can see this whole thing as Bucky’s fault; certainly the plan was created at Bucky’s instigation: he was the one who pulled Patrick aside and said he had a handle on a sure thing and asked if there was any way Patrick could help him capitalize on it. Patrick is guilty of being too weak to resist—and then, of course, of taking the poor decision to the $25-million level.
Bucky says, “I confessed.”
“What?” Patrick says.
“I turned myself in.”
“And you turned me in,” Patrick says.
“Well,” Bucky says, “by default, yes.”
“What exactly did you say?” Patrick asks.
“I told them what happened,” Bucky says.
“Who is ‘they?’ ” Patrick asks.
“The feds.”
“You named me.”
“Man, I had no choice.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“That I told you about MDP, told you it was headed for FDA approval, and you asked me if I wanted to invest some money on my behalf in exchange for the information.”
“Whoa!” Patrick says. “Wait a minute! That is NOT how it happened.”
“What isn’t?”
“You asked me if I would invest for you in exchange for the info.”
“No,” Bucky says. “It was the other way around.”
“It was NOT!” Patrick shouts, and his voice is so loud that every house on Winter Street seems to shimmy on its foundation.
“Anyway,” Bucky says, “I just wanted to let you know what was up.”
“What’s up,” Patrick says, “is that I am headed to jail because of you! And I have a wife! And three kids!”
“I know, man,” Bucky says. But Bucky doesn’t know. Bucky doesn’t have so much as a steady girlfriend. At the reunion, he was hitting on the hot women from their graduating class, all of whom were married. That alone proves the man has no scruples.
“Answer me this,” Patrick says. He has gone outside without a coat, and he’s freezing.
“What?”
“Are you going to jail? Or are they taking it easy on you because you sold me out?”
“Well,” Bucky says.
That’s all Patrick needs to hear. He hangs up the phone.
He screams an expletive at the quiet Nantucket street. Luckily, he thinks, Winter Street is only three houses long, and the other owners are summer people.
He calls Jen. What does he have to lose now? His life is over. He will lose his job and go to jail, and he will be lucky if he goes to jail for insider trading and not first-degree murder, because he seriously wants to KILL Bucky Larimer.
Please, he thinks. Please, Jennifer, answer the phone.
He gets her voice mail almost immediately. He wants to throw his phone down the street, but instead he leaves a message.
“Baby, it’s me.” He swallows. “I’m in big trouble, bigger than maybe we thought on Tuesday. I’m on Nantucket, at the inn; I’m drowning here without you. Call me, please. I need to hear your voice. I need to talk to the boys.” He swallows. “I’ve been having some pretty dark thoughts… anyway, please call me.”
“Patrick?”
Patrick hangs up the phone and turns around. His mother is standing in the doorway.
“Are you okay, honey?” she asks.
Patrick hasn’t talked to his mother about any of this because he didn’t want to ruin her Christmas. He was happy to see her, but having her here also puts a finer point on his shame.
He shakes his head no. She closes the door behind her and comes down the front walk toward him, even though she’s only wearing sweats she borrowed from Ava and a pair of Kelley’s Irish-knit socks.
“I messed up, Mom,” he says.
She puts her arms around him. “Your father told me, sweetheart.”
He starts to cry. He has cried more in the past two days than he has in the rest of his life combined. “I really messed up. And Jen is gone. She won’t answer my calls, and I don’t blame her. It’s going to be in the newspapers. It’s going to publicly humiliate her and the kids… and you.”
“Oh, honey,” Margaret says. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m a grown-up. I can handle it.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Patrick says. “I let you down, I let everybody down. One idiotic decision, and the whole house of cards falls.”
“I’ve seen it again and again and again,” Margaret says. “John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, Lance Armstrong, A-Rod, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger—the list goes on and on. People are fallible, Patrick. People make bad decisions every second of every day. Do you want my advice?”
“Yes,” Patrick says. He expected advice from his father the night before, but, although his father was empathetic, he offered little in the way of practical help.
“Hold your head up high, admit what you did wrong, apologize, and accept your punishment.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“I have the name of a very good lawyer,” she says. “The best. And he owes me a favor.”
“Okay,” Patrick says.
Margaret hugs him again. “I know it feels pretty awful right now. But your father and I know you’re not a bad person. We love you unconditionally.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Do you know what ‘unconditionally’ means?”
He nods, but he wants to hear it anyway.
Margaret says, “It means no matter what.”