“No idea,” said the driver. “But this is the address you put in.”
And then, suddenly, it appeared. They drove under an arch with a sign reading HORSE STABILITY, past two corrals or whatever they were called, and pulled up in front of a large new building that had been designed to look like a storybook farm. A banner across the front proclaimed GRAND OPENING.
Lark went up the walk, thinking that providing free horseback rides to poor kids was a rich person’s almost stereotypical idea of charity—but not a bad use of Holly’s ex-husband’s money, either. Better than spending it on herself. And people had to help however they knew how.
Inside, the party was in full swing as Chicago’s wealthy elite mingled with South Side community leaders and noisy local kids. Lark smiled as she watched a small group of boys raiding the heavily laden dessert table. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see the kids there: Holly was a mom, after all.
Jessica noticed her first and beelined over.
“I didn’t think we’d see you,” she said.
“I got lucky on the timing,” Lark told her. “I had to be here for work, and all I’m missing is a dinner where a bunch of dudes will mansplain my own success to me.”
Jessica grinned ruefully. “Hard to miss that.”
“How are you doing?” Lark asked.
“Really well. Still at Cancura and kicking ass. The first two years post-Jon were a slow-motion nightmare. Half our people left, and our stock lost most of its value, but we didn’t quit. And lo and behold, our new CEO, Kate, led us to the promised land. The technology is doing what it purports to do, and the shareholders—who now include a lot more Cancura principals—are happy again. My first stock options have vested, so . . . I’m never going to be Holly wealthy, but I’m doing okay. More importantly, we’re going to save a lot of lives.”
“Do you have time for a personal life?”
“Almost,” said Jessica, grinning and holding up her left hand to show off a simple gold wedding band. “Happily married to a guy who wouldn’t know an IPO from a post office. You?”
“Dating but not seriously,” Lark told her, which was close enough. Her experience with Trip had made it impossible for her to trust anyone for a few years, but she was working on it.
She felt a hand on her arm and turned. Holly, smiling warmly and looking so stunning that Lark hoped she aged half as well. Trip’s first wife had become Cancura’s largest shareholder after winning half of his fifty-one percent in the divorce and adding that to a few percent she’d already owned. Her parents were rumored to own a significant amount, too—together, they made a formidable voting bloc.
“Congratulations on all your success,” said Holly. “I’ve been following from afar.”
“How are you?” Lark asked.
“Happy, keeping busy. The kids are thriving despite it all. Ava is a junior at Scripps, Paige is taking a gap year, and Logan still doesn’t shower as often as I’d like. Brian’s girls are high school seniors.”
“Who’s Brian?”
Holly pointed out a handsome guy who was helping the cater waiters move a table. “Also divorced. We’re cohabiting. I haven’t moved—still in Barrington Hills. I fought too hard for that place to give it up.”
“Where is . . . ?”
“Jack?”
Lark nodded.
“You mean you don’t have Google alerts for all his aliases?” chuckled Jessica. “I confess I do.”
“Other people alert me often enough,” said Lark, not mentioning that, while the vast majority of comments had been supportive, she had also been the subject of racist slurs and disgusting comments about her looks from creepy cyberstalkers and other shitheads.
“He has a house near mine for hosting the kids,” said Holly. “But most of the time he’s everywhere else.”
“I personally think he hangs upside down in hotel-room closets until nightfall,” said Jessica. “He seems to be getting around again.”
Lark knew the broad outlines. Trip had been behind bars when he fell off the Forbes 400. After serving eighteen months of a five-year federal sentence for securities fraud, tax evasion, and a touch of embezzlement, and ten months in an Illinois prison for bigamy, he had all but disappeared until about a year ago, when, despite his public humiliation and utterly destroyed reputation, he’d suddenly emerged as “Jon M. Wright” to deliver a new TED Talk, “How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth.” Since then he’d been a fixture on the speaking circuit.
“I had someone look into it and discovered he makes ten thousand dollars a speech, if you can believe it,” said Holly.
“He’s also got a new start-up that supposedly connects inventors to ‘thought leaders, rainmakers, and influencers,’” added Jessica.
“I can’t believe anyone would buy that,” said Lark.
“The TED Talk is getting some traffic, but guess which vastly more popular video comes up with every search?”
“Sometimes I wish I could just make him go away,” said Lark. “The fact that he still exists is just . . . exhausting.”
“I hope this question doesn’t seem rude, but why do you think he wanted to marry you?” asked Jessica. “I think I know the answer for Holly and myself, but you’re still a little bit of an enigma. You’re obviously gorgeous and brilliant, but I still don’t believe that’s why he proposed.”
Holly, who was no doubt too refined to pose the question herself, raised an eyebrow.
“I asked him why, and he told me it was simply because he loved me,” Lark told them. “I honestly think I was just a way to escape. I wrestled with that for a long time before deciding it didn’t matter. So instead of thinking about my life as a part of his, I’m turning that around. He was just a short chapter in my story.”
“He’ll never escape himself,” said Holly. “No matter how hard he made life for us, he will always think he has it infinitely worse. And in a strange way, that makes me happy.”
Flagging down a passing waiter for a glass of wine, Lark
