I remembered when the bank building was constructed, back in the winter of eighty-eight. Graham had insisted on the dark cherry paneling for Victor’s office, paying for the upgrade himself as a gesture of partnership.
I walked past three busy secretaries who kept their heads down, their fingers flying over their keyboards as if they had not seen me approach. Usually, they would look up, offer a smile, and ask about my garden or my sister in Savannah.
One of them, a young woman named Clara who had sent me handwritten Christmas cards for ten years, looked up briefly and then shifted her gaze to her computer screen. She adjusted a stack of legal folders, her hand blocking her face from my view.
I held my breath to keep from crying, keeping my shoulders back and my chin up as I walked. The heels of my shoes made a sharp, clean sound on the tile, a lonely rhythm that seemed to echo off the wood-paneled walls.
The silence in the hallway felt deliberate, a heavy curtain drawn between my thirty-seven years of marriage and the corporate machinery Graham had built. Nobody came out of their office to offer condolences, though most of these men had sat at my dining room table.
A courier in a blue uniform hurried past me, his boots squeaking on the polished tile. He carried a stack of overnight envelopes toward the back offices, not even pausing to look at the widow in black.
At the end of the corridor, the double oak doors to Victor’s private suite stood slightly ajar, letting out a sliver of yellow light.
I could hear the low, clipped murmur of his voice before I reached the threshold, the tone sharp and efficient.
Victor did not stand when I entered, which was the first small tear in the fabric of my quiet life. He had always been the epitome of Southern manners, rising instantly whenever a woman walked into the room.
Victor had been our personal attorney for over twenty years, representing Graham through three major hotel acquisitions and countless smaller transactions. He had stood beside us at our silver anniversary, raising a glass of champagne to toast our marriage.
