"Matthew," William said, his voice empathetic now, "I'm afraid you have no choice." He unfolded the document and placed it before Matthew. "We've put together a first-rate severance package for you."
For what felt like a long time, Matthew was unable to do anything but sit there and stare down at the document that spelled out the rewards of his terrific failure. His brain sizzled as he attempted to focus on the details. He saw numbers and lots of parenthesized paragraphs. There was a long line at the bottom, with his name printed beneath it.
He raised his head and looked across the table at Peter. "Why? Why didn't you just agree with me when I suggested all this? It would have had the same outcome."
"Sorry, Matthew, but it was never that simple."
But it could be now, Matthew thought, sitting there at the breakfast table, clutching tightly in his fist the little circular thing he had been hiding in his briefcase for so many years.
He was completely spent, used up. Alone. There was no one for him
now. No one he could call on. William had informed him that
Laurence had arranged for a transfer to an ICP office in France.
And, effective immediately, Eileen, his former secretary, was
Byron Holmes's personal assistant.
And then there was Greta.
He opened his fist and looked at the gold object in his palm. It rolled out of his hand onto the tabletop.
He twirled Greta's wedding band round and round with his fingertip. On that awful day years ago, he had retrieved the ring from the boat deck before kicking her severed finger into the ocean. Unable to face the horror of what had happened to her, to her hand, he had hidden the ring in his briefcase ever since.
She was the only person in the world who had ever truly supported him, the only person who would know just what to say right now. And she was gone. He had destroyed her, too, with his damnable, selfish dream. A dream that had become a nightmare. One from which there would be no waking. It was all over. Really and truly through.