WIN by Coben, Harlan (best book reader txt) 📕

“I’ll give you the name under two conditions.”

I steeple my fingers. “I’m listening.”

“First, you promise if you find him to hear him out. If he convinces you he didn’t do anything, you let him go.”

“Done,” I say.

It isn’t as though this promise is binding. I believe in certain degrees of loyalty and “my word is my bond” stuff. I don’t believe in all of it. I am bound by what I believe is best, not some false promise or faux loyalty. Either way, it is easy to say, “Done,” mean it or not.

“What’s the second condition?”

“You forgive all my debts.”

Confession: I’m impressed. “Your debts,” I say, “total more than a hundred thousand dollars.”

Elena shrugs. “You’re superrich.”

I have to say. I like it. I like it a lot.

“If the name you give me ends up being a lie—” I begin.

“It’s not.”

“Do you think there is any chance they are still together?”

“I do. They seemed very much in love. Do we have a deal?”

It’s going to cost me six figures, but I lose and gain that amount every minute when the markets are open. I am also philanthropic, mostly because I can afford to be. Elena Randolph and her salon seem like a worthy cause.

“We have a deal,” I say.

“Mind if we orally confirm that?”

“Sorry?”

She takes out her phone and makes me record my promise. “Just putting it on the record,” Elena says.

I almost tell her that my word is my bond, but we both know that’s nonsense. I like her more and more. When we finish the recording, she puts the phone back in her purse.

“Okay,” I say. “So who did Arlo Sugarman leave you for?”

“I didn’t understand at the time,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“It was the seventies. We were at an evangelical school. It just wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t what?” I ask. “Who did he leave you for?”

Elena Randolph picks up the photocopied image of the medieval group from her old yearbook. She points—but not at Arlo. She points instead at the lead singer on the far left. I squint to see the blurry black-and-white image better.

“Calvin Sinclair,” she says.

I look up at her.

“That’s why we broke up. Arlo realized he was gay.”

CHAPTER 27

I hate that I care about Ema so much.

I never wanted children because I never wanted this feeling, this feeling of horrendous vulnerability, where someone else’s welfare has the ability to destroy me. I can’t really be harmed, except via my biological daughter Ema. To have her in my life now—she sits across from me as we dine in my apartment overlooking Central Park—is to know worry and pain. Some would say this feeling, this parental worry, makes me more human. Whatever. Who wants to be more human? It’s awful.

I had no children because I wanted no fears. I had no children because attachment is a hindrance. I worked this out analytically, so let me explain: I list the possible positives of having Ema in my life—love, companionship, someone to care for, all that—and I list the negatives—suppose something happens to her?

When I review this equation, the negatives win out.

I don’t want to live in fear.

“You okay?” Ema asks me.

“Groovy,” I say.

She rolls her eyes.

Her real name is Emma, but she always wears black clothes and black lipsticks and silver jewelry, and in middle school some dumb kid noted that she looked goth or “Emo” and so her classmates started calling her “Ema” and thought they were being clever and perhaps mean, but Ema turned the tables on them and embraced it. Ema is a high school senior now, but she’s also taking classes in art and design in the city.

When Ema’s mother, Angelica Wyatt, became pregnant, she didn’t inform me. She didn’t inform me upon Ema’s birth. I wasn’t angry or the slightest bit annoyed when Angelica finally told me. She understood how I felt about kids and respected it, but a few years back, she came clean, so to speak, for three reasons. One, she figured that enough time had passed (meh reason); two, I deserved to know the truth (ugh reason—I don’t deserve anything); and three, if something happened to Angelica—she had a breast cancer scare at the time—I would be there should Ema need me (decent reason).

What’s my point in telling you this?

I don’t deserve this relationship with Ema. I wasn’t there when it mattered, and if I had been given the choice, I wouldn’t have been. That is why I call her, even in my head, my “biological” daughter. Ema is magnificent in every way, and I can take no credit for that. I do not have the right to bask in the parental glow of her greatness.

I didn’t ask for this relationship. I don’t really want it either—I explained to you the pros and cons—but for now, this is Ema’s choice, and I need to respect that.

So, like it or not, we do meals like this.

Addendum: Ema gets me.

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“It’s what I’m like.”

“No advice?”

I put down my fork. “Boys,” I say, “and by boys I mean ‘all boys’—boys are creepy.”

“Duh, like who doesn’t know that. What’s your take on teenage sex?”

“Please stop.”

Ema stifles a laugh. She likes teasing me. I don’t know how to behave around her because I feel like the blood is leaving my head sometimes. At some point, Angelica decided to tell Ema about me. No great plan on Angelica’s part. Perhaps Ema had reached an age. Perhaps Ema had simply asked who her father was. I don’t know and it’s not my place to ask.

Angelica is some mother.

You hear the following a lot: When your child is born, your life changes forever. That’s why I avoided fatherhood. I don’t want something in my life I care about more than me. Is that wrong? When Ema finally told me she knew—when she asked me to dance at Myron’s wedding—I was knocked off-balance. It was hard to breathe. When Ema and I stopped dancing, the feeling didn’t totally go away.

It still hasn’t.

In the