She pulled papers out of Clint’s desk and sorted them; there were old bills, faxes from work, receipts from restaurants. There was a receipt for the deposit he’d sent to the hotel they’d stayed at for the honeymoon. She picked it up and held it to her face to see if she could still smell the salty air. She couldn’t. She put it down and kept taking other papers out of the drawers and arranging them in piles.
Most of the bills and receipts were easy to recognize. Some were for business. Cindy put those in a pile. Then she found a receipt from the Grande Hotel in Boston, for the week-end Clint was supposed to be in D.C . She put that receipt on her lap. It confirmed what Al told her. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t a shock .
The next receipt she found, though, stopped her completely. It was from a hotel in Manhattan, Century Plaza, dated three weeks before the wedding. Cindy’s heart started pounding. There had to be an explanation, though she didn’t know what.
She’d contact Clint’s old assistant, Bara, who had his full schedule at work .
She put that receipt in a separate place and continued. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for either, but knew she’d recognize it when it came around. It was the tapestry of a life she was touching, of days, hours, money spent, calls received and answered.
When all the drawers of the desk were cleared, she went to Clint’s computer to check through his personal emails and files. It was strange typing his password and logging in. Even though she knew she had to do it, Cindy felt as though she were invading his private life. It made her think of her own emails. She knew there were probably dozens of them piling up. But she just hadn’t been able to deal with them.
There were 180 emails waiting for Clint. It was going to be a long night. Cindy began opening them, one at a time. There were emails about meetings scheduled, and attended. She read follow up comments from Clint and thank you notes from others to him for his terrific contribution. There were invitations for lunch, dinner . There were even a few emails from a lobbyist. Clint had had a busy life.
Cindy knew he went to Washington regularly and attended conferences, but didn’t realize that he’d also met with lobbyists. She hadn’t known the full extent of his research, or that it impacted on bills passed in Congress. Clint had only mentioned it once or twice in passing.
There were a bunch of emails from a guy named Greg Hamden, a close co-worker of Clint’s. Cindy remembered him mentioning Greg. He and Clint had been working on the Tearwall Project together for a while.
The emails from Greg were right to the point.
Cindy kept scrolling through the emails to see if she could find more.
Another one gave her pause for a moment -
Clint hadn’t responded to that one. What was it Cindy didn’t know that she was getting into, that A.V. knew?
Cindy kept scrolling. There were a cluster of emails talking about the Washington Conference. Clint had been excited to go. He was presenting a paper on the Tearwall Project . He’d written a bunch of emails telling people the time and place of his presentation, that he was looking forward to seeing them there.
Then something had happened. There were a flurry of emails from people at his company asking Clint to come to meetings. He and Greg had met for separate lunches. Clint’s presentation had suddenly been cancelled. Cindy couldn’t tear herself away. Clint had told her he’d gone to the conference and presented his paper there.
The emails told a different story .
When the presentation was cancelled, Clint, very upset, emailed Greg to let him know.
Cindy didn’t know what to make of all this. She needed more information about the Tearwall Project and why Clint’s presentation had been tossed aside. She also realized she needed more information about his company and what exactly it was involved in.
Cindy went to the company’s public website . She clicked on the company history and its employees and a whole page devoted to Clint came up.
Clint’s function in the company was to investigate the environmental and ecological effects of a drill at a particular location. To advise the company of the safety parameters involved. He was also a prominent part of the public relations effort of the firm. It felt good reading about him, seeing how important he was to them.
There were several pieces about him posted there. As she read on she realized that Clint was quickly becoming a widely sought expert on the effects of off shore drilling on the environment. His research had been not only thorough, but unique. He’d had all kinds of contacts and delved into sources that most had no way of getting hold of. Articles about him said there was no stone he’d leave unturned. All well and good, but she needed more.
She decided to use Clint’s password and log directly into his company’s network .
There were letters from people turning to him for his opinion from all over the country, and beyond. Officials in Washington were contacting him regularly to support their bills. The information he gathered was vital to their decisions about where to drill, when and how. It seemed clear that Clint was doing a service to the entire world, both the drilling companies and the wild ocean life, shorelines, people, nations.
Fascinated, Cindy wanted to read the presentation he wrote that had been cancelled - his report on the Tearwall Project. It had to be somewhere here in his company files . Several other reports of his were there.
But to her surprise, the report on the Tearwall Project had been deleted.
Cindy sent out a flurry of emails to three or four people in the company then, asking if they had a copy.
It struck her then that the report might be on Clint’s personal computer. She quickly went to it, logged in as him and checked. As she did, Cindy was surprised to see that Clint had been heavily downloading his files from work, the last few weeks before the wedding. The Tearwall Project report had to be here. Cindy searched and searched.
It wasn’t there .
She got up from the desk and stretched. It was after one in the morning. She’d completely lost her sense of time. But she couldn’t sleep now, even if she wanted to. Her mind was spinning. She was troubled that Clint hadn’t told her that his presentation had been cancelled. Why not? He must have been embarrassed by it. Or, was there something in it that he didn’t want her to know? She couldn’t discount that possibility. More and more aspects of Clint’s life were now opening up in front of her eyes. She felt sick to her stomach. There was so much he hadn’t shared.
As she looked about the room, the boxes of files along the back of the room caught her eye. Her heart leapt. Maybe there was a hard copy of the report stored there. He couldn’t have just thrown it out. Cindy ran to the boxes and pulled them open.
These were neater, organized by subject and date, alphabetized in chronological order. That was a relief. She ruffled through them quickly. No sign or mention of The Tearwall Project Report.
Cindy put the packet of files down on her lap. Perspiration was running down her back. Where was that report? What happened to it? The report would contain both a copy of his presentation and details about the project itself. She absolutely had to have it. It couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
She needed a break, but didn’t have that luxury. Ann had been hurt. Who knew what would happen next? Both Heather and Clint’s little son could be in danger. She thought of how Heather’s face had grown ashen as she realized what was going on. Cindy didn’t really know what had gone on between her and Clint, but she certainly couldn’t let either of them be hurt. It wasn’t fair.
What was fair? Cindy wondered, as she dwelt on everything. She remembered asking Clint about his research from time to time. He’d said by and large, it was confidential. She’d never probed further. She’d never probed anything. Those days were over now. There wasn’t a sentence she’d now let go by.
Cindy had thought that Clint had told her everything about his life. They’d prided themselves on openness and honesty. Wrong. That frightened her. She’d always believed that life was fair, that there was order, balance and, at the end, justice for everyone. Now she questioned that .
It was disheartening going through his papers though, retracing his steps. But she needed specifics: names, dates, information. She’d have to contact the firm to get it.
