by Davis Bunn
At Carol’s blank look, Esther explained that a hedge fund was an investment vehicle that pooled capital from major depositors and invested in securities and other instruments. In most cases, they leveraged their investments, paying only a small percentage of the actual investment’s total value. This could take the form of short-term debt, or derivatives, or a number of other more complex directions. They also hedged their investments by taking positions that limited their potential risk. If a market or industry valuation fell below a certain level, the “floor” went into effect, cutting their losses.
Esther then added, “Hedge funds are largely ungoverned and highly secretive. They charge a flat up-front fee of around seven percent, taking an additional twenty percent of all profits they generate.”
“There’s bound to be some of them out there already,” Talmadge noted.
“There are.”
“Yours is different, then.”
“In three ways. First, hedge funds generally refuse to accept any investment under a hundred thousand dollars. They also require investors to have a minimum net worth of five million. I want to open this to everyone. Thousand-dollar minimum.”
“Ten thousand,” Talmadge corrected.
“A thousand dollars,” Esther insisted. “And further investments will be welcome in increments of five hundred.”
“You’re gonna be deluged with worried grannies.”
“And secretaries,” Esther agreed. “And young families. Anyone who wants a hedge against what is worrying us.”
Talmadge kneaded the head of his cane.
Esther went on, “Second, we will operate in a completely transparent manner.”
“Which means every Tom, Dick, and Harry can copy you.”
“If they want to, fine. This isn’t about making money. Well, it is. Of course I’ll try to deliver a profit to my investors. But mostly this is about protection for those who have none.”
“And third?”
“All investors under twenty-five thousand dollars will pay no up-front charge. And if there is a profit, our take will be limited to ten percent. Above that level of investment, we charge the standard fees.”
It was the first time she had spoken to Talmadge about an actual business proposal. She watched closely as he deliberated. Anything could happen. He could give her tacit approval and not help her obtain the required funds, or accept the role of that all-important first investor. He could condemn her for setting up a business model that risked losing money in a variety of spectacular methods.
He looked at Carol. “What do you think?”
“I can definitely sell this.”
“No question?”
“Visits to her site are running close to seventy thousand an hour,” Carol said. “This hedge fund concept is a logical next step. People are wanting a means to protect themselves, invest what they can, prepare for the worst. This new idea fits perfectly.”
Talmadge said to Esther, “Give me a couple of hours.”
Esther got caught in rush-hour traffic and required seventy minutes to drive the five miles to Patricia’s home. She arrived to find Patricia in the kitchen with her sister and daughter. Rachel was making an apple strudel, kneading cinnamon and sugar and sour cream into the dough, which she assured Esther was the secret. Patricia was dressing and sautéing chicken for the grill. Lacy prepared a Cobb salad in a large earthenware bowl. Patricia told Esther, “You can take me away to some quiet corner or you can draw up a stool. But you can’t help. There isn’t room for a fourth cook.”
“I’ll quit,” Lacy offered.
“You will do no such thing. A good cook never switches serfs in midstream.”
Esther only needed a moment to decide. “Here is good.” She turned to Lacy and observed, “You’re looking better.”
Lacy tried for a bright lilt. “I’m staying home for spring break, my mother is fattening me up, and my awful former boyfriend is somewhere far away. Hopefully being miserable and lonely and full of bitter regret.”
“I hear the Faroe Islands are especially brutal this time of year,” Rachel suggested. “We could send him a ticket.”
The kitchen went silent then. Esther knew they were waiting. It astonished her how easy it was to talk with them. After a lifetime of hiding everything away, here she was, seated in a corner of a brightly lit kitchen, on the verge of relating events to three women from very different walks of life. A faint whisper ran through her mind, protesting that they were strangers and always would be. But the voice was stifled within the space of a single long breath.
As she recounted the events surrounding Craig and his daughters, Esther thought she sounded dry and utterly disconnected. But there was nothing she could do about that. She did not try to describe her inner tumult because she did not know how.
Even so, when she finished, Rachel said, “I could kill that guy.”
“You can’t do away with a pastor,” Patricia warned. “It’s written somewhere in the church code of ethics.”
“He’s not a pastor yet.” Rachel pounded the dough. “If he doesn’t watch out, he never will be.”
Esther asked, “So you don’t think I did something wrong?”
Lacy shook her head. “I’ve been humming that same dirge a lot recently. Mostly late at night.”
“No, honey,” Patricia said to Esther. “I think you told Craig exactly what he needed to hear. His girls don’t want to be part of a pastor’s family. Regardless of everything else they’re facing, this is not going to change. We can all see that.”
Rachel sprinkled flour over the dough. “You answered his question honestly and from the heart. You didn’t insist. You didn’t order. You didn’t criticize.”
Patricia said, “You know what I like best? Your first thought was for the two girls who have been struggling with a very difficult situation.”
“Those girls have needed an adult to be on their side,” Rachel agreed.
“Craig is on their side,” Esther pointed out.
“He’s also involved. You asked him to see his life from their perspective.” Rachel pounded hard enough to shoot a cloud of flour into her face. “Craig should have seen that and thanked you.”
“Why, Aunt Rachel,” Lacy said, “you’ve gone all white.”
Esther felt the moment crystallize inside her. The flash of realization went far deeper than just the issues with Craig. Up to that point, she had been involved in the public warnings mostly on a mental level. She understood her motives. She analyzed the events and knew she had to act. She was objective. She was . . .
Removed. Distant.
This was different.
Craig’s earlier question came alive in her mind and heart. Why was she doing this?
Esther said softly, “I understand.”
“I wish I did,” Rachel said.
This was what it meant, to care for one another. To lift one another’s burdens. To offer light in a dark hour. To counsel. To . . .
To care.
Esther wished desperately for Craig to be here now. So she could share this realization with him. She confessed, “I miss him.”
Patricia asked, “Should I call him?”
“Sure can’t be me,” Rachel said, with a last punch at the dough. “I’d only yell at him.”
Patricia flicked a strand of hair from her eyes. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“That would be nice, thank you.”
She watched Patricia wash her hands, set the kettle on the stove, and stretch aluminum foil over the tray of chicken. Internally she observed the various strands of her life coalescing and weaving and binding. Her fears, Craig, these people, Talmadge, Jasmine, Keith, her years of study, the books of calculations, even her splintered childhood. She had the sense that she had been on some odd form of pilgrimage, one that had lasted from her parents’ funerals to this moment. It was only now, as she smiled her thanks and accepted the steaming mug, that it made some kind of sense. The knowledge of what she needed to do next wa
s so clear, so vividly simple, Esther knew it was simply the next stage. “There’s another problem I need your advice on,” Esther said. “It has to do with my brother.”
When she finished explaining the situation, the calamitous choice she faced, all three women had stopped work. They stared with a unified expression. Patricia needed a moment to find her voice. “Esther, honey, how long has this been going on?”
“The accident was seven months ago.”
“Why haven’t you told us?”
The truth, so simply asked, left her unable to stop the tears. “It’s how I’ve lived my whole life. Alone.”
32
Patricia insisted that Esther stay for dinner. Five minutes later, Donald pulled into the drive, followed by Rachel’s husband and daughter. The evening was warm enough for them to sit outside and dine by the sunset’s glow. After dinner Esther took a seat by a side wall somewhat removed from the family. The others left her alone, accustomed as they were to her quiet reserve. Then Lacy settled on the bench beside her and said, “I’ve been assured that it gets better. Well, not better. Easier. And then after a while the pain backs off, and we’ll be able to breathe and think like human beings again.”
Esther wondered at this poised young lady who had no difficulty offering advice on romance to a woman a dozen years older. “What if I don’t want it to get better?”
Lacy’s smile seemed forced. “What tiny portion of this has anything to do with what we want? Please tell me. My parents keep going on about how it’s probably all for the best.”
Patricia walked out to the deck and said, “Donald wants to ask you about your brother . . . I’m sorry, what’s his name?”
“Nathan.”
“I hope it’s okay that I told him about it.”
Esther rose from her chair. “Of course.”
For a specialist who had just returned from twelve hours in surgery, Donald showed remarkable interest. Esther explained the decision she faced, assuming that would be enough for anyone. But he gently insisted she start at the beginning. She relived the awful night of the accident, how she had arrived at the hospital only minutes after the two of them had been brought in. She had held Nathan’s hand as he was rolled from the ER into surgery.
Esther’s mind remained caught by the flash of horror that still brought her out of deepest sleep some nights, the female ER doctor coming out of the other alcove with one shake of her head at the chief resident, her gown still stained, her face creased with the futile battle for a life she had just lost. . . .
Donald waited her out, then pressed forward. The others had stopped pretending not to listen by this point, which in some odd way actually made the telling easier. Patricia had seated herself beside Esther and now held her hand. Donald asked if she remembered the specific injuries the surgeon had treated. Esther replied that she remembered everything.
Donald had very little to say about it all, except to ask if he might drop by and speak with the rehab clinic’s doctor. Esther almost wept at the thought of being able to put off the dreadful decision about moving Nathan. He smiled at her gratitude and pretended not to notice her tears.
She returned home an emotional wreck. She had talked more about herself that afternoon and evening than . . . well, forever, really.
She spent a futile half hour studying the markets, but the screens might as well have been showing a message from Mars for all the sense they made. She finally admitted defeat and got ready for bed. But she knew she wouldn’t sleep. All the memories and emotions were still there, crowding her bedroom.
She returned to her office and pulled her Bible off the bookshelf. She settled into the bed and read from the book of Esther. When she finally shut off the light, she continued to hear her father’s voice, reading the passages and then describing what it might have looked like, what Esther might have felt and experienced. As she drifted off to sleep, she could almost feel the touch of his hand.
33
TUESDAY
Esther overslept for the second time in a week. She awoke in such a luxurious obliviousness, she needed a moment to realize . . .
She was due on air in thirty-three minutes.
Esther bolted from bed and raced through dressing herself, skipped cosmetics entirely, blessed the automatic timer on her coffeemaker, took a single insulated mug with her, and was out the door in twelve minutes flat.
When her phone rang and she saw that it was the clinic, she almost let it go to voicemail. But the sense of obligation was too ingrained. She answered with a hurried, “Can I call you back in an hour?”
For the first time ever, the clinic’s doctor had lost his assertive rush. “Ah, perhaps it would be best . . .”
Dr. Carter Cleveland was a man ruled by an utterly unflappable confidence. The hesitancy rang Esther’s alarm bells. “What’s the matter with Nathan?”
“Nothing . . . That is, nothing more than usual.”
“What aren’t you saying?” When he remained silent, she almost shouted, “Tell me.”
“I’ve had a word with Dr. Donald Saunders.”
“And?”
“He wants to arrange for your brother to undergo several more tests.”
Esther wished she could reach through the phone and shake him. “I’m driving at near sixty on city streets because I’m due on air in eleven minutes. Either tell me why you called or—”
“We can’t do these tests here. It means transporting your brother to the hospital.”
“Are you saying he can’t come back?”
“Well, no. But any movement of your brother carries risk.”
“I don’t understand. You’re worried about transporting my brother down the block when you are forcing me to move him to another city?”
“We’re not . . . Look, I just wanted to make sure you were in agreement here.”
“The answer is yes.”
“After all, you are his guardian.”
“That is correct.” She raced through a caution light and took the final corner far too fast. “I have to go. I’ll stop by the clinic later.”
The same harried aide was pacing outside the station’s main door. As Esther cut her motor, he shouted, “You’re on in three minutes!”
Esther did not waste breath on a response. Together they rushed across the foyer, aiming for the door the receptionist had already buzzed open. They passed the station director who said something Esther did not bother to hear. Onto the sound stage, across the darkened cement floor, halting behind the central camera.
A voice called over the intercom, “Ninety seconds break.”
Suzie McManning gave Esther a serene smile. “I told them you’d show up, and on time.”
The makeup lady straightened Esther’s hair and decided, “I’m not going to do your face. You’ll only sweat it off.”
“Dab a little powder over that sheen on her nose and forehead,” Suzie said. “She’ll be just fine.”
“Thirty seconds,” the techie said.
Suzie asked, “Are you ready?”
“Not a bit,” Esther replied.
Suzie’s smile only broadened. “This is going to be fun.”
“We’re back with Esther Larsen, senior analyst with CFM here in Charlotte, and soon to become our very own financial guru. Welcome, Esther.”
“Thank you.”
“We have been discussing three issues impacting our nation’s economic prospects,” Suzie reminded her audience. “First was China, second, the declining economies in the developing nations, and third . . .” She nodded to Esther.
“The financial institutions,” Esther supplied. She wished there were some way of slowing down her heart so it didn’t cause tremors in each word.
“Are we speaking about our local banks and investment funds, or all of the US, or . . . ?”
“There is no longer any such boundary,” Esther replied. She took a quick breath, let it out. “Every major bank in Charlotte now has significant presence overseas. Their investments take p
lace wherever they see a potential profit.”
“This is particularly true with the institutions that have investment banking divisions?”
“Correct.” Esther felt her breathing ease. She was back on her own turf. They were in sync once again.
Or so she assumed. Thankfully, it was not often that one of her analyses was so far off target.
“Your website contains a great deal of useful information on the role banks currently play in today’s economy and tomorrow’s potential decline. So rather than deal with it here, I’d suggest the audience take a careful look at your online data.”
The comment caught Esther completely off guard. She had expected the entire on-air discussion to center on the banks. She felt a swooping dive of fear, which was only heightened by Suzie’s knowing smile.
The newscaster said, “Esther, if you had the opportunity to address our nation’s leaders, what would you say?” Suzie waited through a ten-second silence, then pressed, “I assume there is something.”
Into the frozen tundra of Esther’s scrambling mind rose one coherent thought. She said, “In one of the last speeches before his death, President Abraham Lincoln told Congress, ‘I see a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. And the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.’”
It was Suzie’s turn to pause. “You think that time is now?”
“Perhaps. If nothing is done to stop it. Yes.”
34
Esther arrived at the clinic, but the doctor was nowhere to be found, and Nathan was still off-site being tested. She phoned Donald only to be told he was in surgery. She walked down the hall and stood in the doorway to Nathan’s room, staring at the empty bed, trying to acclimatize herself to the idea that he soon would be permanently elsewhere. She simply could not see how Donald’s assistance and any amount of testing could do more than put off the inevitable.