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back in the office. Working off the books. As legal consultant or something. Not a partner again, god knows, but back.”
    “Marion.
That
bitch.”
    “I don’t know why, but for some reason she seems to be willing to do just about anything for him.”
    “You want to bet she’s screwing him?”
    “I don’t know. I never thought Marion was the type to get involved with a partner. I thought she was just your basic shark. But get this, though. It was Marion’s
secretary
who notarized the loan.”
    “Ow!” It was Amy’s nipple that hurt, not the information.
    Claire flinched. Amy almost laughed. It was as though it were Claire’s breast and not Amy’s that the tiny jaws had pinched.
    She shifted Melissa to the other breast. Melissa didn’t cry. Miraculously, she almost never cried now.
    Claire smiled, looking relieved, as the baby nuzzled in.
    It struck her as a little strange. She’d nursed Luke, hadn’t she? Of course she had. She remembered it clearly. So why the squeamishness over a little bite?
    She let it pass.
    “Wait a minute,” she said. “I want to get this right.Marion’s secretary notarized the loan to cover his debt to the firm, correct?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “So she knew all about the forgery. They both did.”
    “She had to.”
    “Absolutely unbelievable.”
    Unbeknownst to Claire, Steven had taken out a loan nine months ago, about a year into their separation, for well over a half million dollars—Amy couldn’t remember the figure exactly. The loan was to cover half the out-of-court settlement of a former client’s suit against the firm. The firm was absorbing the other half.
    Steven had somehow mismanaged the client’s funds. It wasn’t the first time he’d been accused of that and this time the firm was holding him accountable.
    So he put up their home in Greenwich as collateral. And forged Claire’s signature to the documents.
    Half a million was the entire value of their house, less the mortgage.
    At the time, with Steven’s support as erratic as it was, Claire and Luke were just barely getting by.
    Then he got himself fired, lost his partnership over some new problem. Nobody knew what, and nobody at the firm was telling.
    They just called in his loan.
    First the support dried up. Then Steven disappeared completely.
    He’d given up his lease on the apartment in Manhattan and left no forwarding address. Neither Claire nor Luke had seen or heard from him in over six months. Christmas and Luke’s birthday had come and gone without a word from him.
    Her job as a secretary didn’t even cover the mortgage payments, never mind food and clothing.
    And now his creditors were howling. Howling to Claire.
    Hell, they couldn’t
find
Steven.
    And the loan wasn’t his only forgery, either. He’d signed her name to their tax return last year so she wouldn’t know they were into the IRS for over a quarter of a million dollars.
    So the IRS was howling too.
    They didn’t care who signed the goddamn papers. It was a joint return and they wanted the money.
    God only knew what else was out there. Waiting to pounce.
    In a few months’ time she’d gone from pretty well off to flat broke, with no credit and in debt to the neck. The half-million-dollar loan, the mortgage, gas and electric, credit cards, car payments—all were with collection agencies by now.
    She didn’t even answer the phone anymore; there were so many dunning calls. She spent cash she didn’t have on a phone machine to screen them.
    Amy and David had loaned her the money for a lawyer. The lawyer was trying to track Steven down to serve him papers for the divorce hearing—he’d done that now, finally—and work out reduction of liability deals with all parties concerned, based upon the forgeries. But even so she was going to lose the house. Pretty much all of it. If she was lucky she’d come out of it with thirty thousand dollars, the lawyer said.
    She was thirty-seven. Luke was eight. They hadmaybe thirty thousand to build a