Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

She confirmed with a glance that she’d hooked the chain on the front door, so whatever sound she had heard from the closet, it hadn’t been Brian returning. In the kitchen, she opened her laptop and looked up Alden Minerals Ltd. It was a mining company headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, that owned a single mine in Papua New Guinea. According to the recent assessment of that mine by a consulting firm, Borgeau Engineering, the mine was sitting on resources in excess of 400,000,000 troy ounces. A recent item in the Wall Street Journal made reference to a rumor that the dominant mining concern in Papua New Guinea, Houston-based Vitterman Copper & Gold, was contemplating a friendly takeover of Alden Minerals.

Alden Minerals was family-owned and family-run by Brian and Nicole Alden. Rachel found no pictures of them. She didn’t need pictures. She knew what they looked like.

She called Glen O’Donnell at the Globe . She and Glen had come up together, first at the Patriot Ledger, then at the Globe . She’d worked in investigative features, he covered business. After five minutes of pleasantries in which she learned he and his partner, Roy, had adopted a daughter from Guatemala and bought a house in Dracut, she asked Glen if he’d research Alden Minerals for her.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “I’ll get right back to you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do—”

“Be my pleasure. I’m not doing shit now anyway. Call you right back.”

Another glass of pinot later, she sat in the living room by the picture window and watched night find Arlington, Cambridge, and the river. As the world turned brass and then blue, she considered her life without him. The panic attacks would return, she suspected, as soon as the numbness wore off. All the progress she’d made in the last six months would vanish. Not only would she go back to zero, she feared that this series of shocks — oh, your husband has another wife; oh, your husband has another life; oh, you might not even know your husband’s real name — would plunge her into free fall. Already a ball of mild hysteria clotted her windpipe when she imagined interacting with the world again, with people, with strangers, with those who could not rescue her, who would run from her pain the moment they smelled it. ( Thin the herd, thin the herd, thin the herd. ) One day she wouldn’t be able to board the elevator again; the next she’d need to have her groceries delivered. She’d wake up a few years from now and realize she couldn’t remember the last time she’d left the building. She’d have no more power over herself or her terrors.

And where had that power come from? It had come from herself, yes, of course it had. But it had also come from him. It had come from love. Or what she mistook for love.

An actor. Her Brian was an actor. He’d practically rubbed her face in it during the argument after his “return” from London when he’d made reference to Clark Rockefeller. Which meant not only was Brian not Brian, he wasn’t a Delacroix. But how was that possible?

She went back online, searched for “Brian Delacroix.” The bio that came up matched what Brian had told her — forty, employee of Delacroix Lumber, a Canadian lumber concern with holdings in twenty-six countries. She clicked “images” and found only four, but there he was, her Brian — same hair, same jawline, same eyes, same... not the same nose.

Her Brian had that bump just above the septum at the beginning of the nasal bone. Unnoticeable head-on, but discernible in profile. Even then it could escape notice if you weren’t looking for it. But if you were, it wasn’t up for argument — he had a bump on the bridge of his nose.

Brian Delacroix did not. Two of the photos were profiles; no bump. She took a longer look at the head-on shots, and the longer she looked into Brian Delacroix’s eyes, the more she realized she’d never looked into them before.

Her Brian Delacroix/Brett Alden was an actor. Andrew Gattis, his inconvenient friend from the past, was an actor. Caleb knew both of them quite comfortably. It seemed a rational leap that Caleb might be an actor too.

As the dark settled over the river, she texted him.

Got a moment to swing by?

A minute later, he responded.

NP. What do you need?

Tiny bit of muscle. Rearranging a few things b4 B gets back.

See u in 15.

Thx.

Her cell vibrated. Glen.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he said. “What’s this company to you, Rachel?”

“Nothing much. Why?”

“It’s a rinky-dink operation that owns a rinky-dink mine in Papua New Guinea. However...” She heard him click his mouse a couple times. “Turns out the mine might not be so rinky-dink. Rumor has it a consulting firm did an assessment and found out Alden Minerals could be sitting on resources of up to four hundred million troy ounces.”

“I came across something about that,” she said. “What’re troy ounces, by the way?”

“Gold measurement. Sorry. It’s literally a gold mine. Won’t do them much good, though. The major competition in that region — the only competition they’d have — is Vitterman Copper & Gold and they don’t play nice in the sandbox. And Vitterman would never, fucking ever allow a mine to be sitting in that region on that kind of lode and not have their name on it. So at some point there’s going to be a hostile takeover. Which is why Alden has been trying to keep news of the consulting company’s findings hush-hush. Unfortunately for them, they needed more cash. They took several meetings with Cotter-McCann.”

“Who’s that?”

“A venture capital group. Last week Cotter-McCann leased several parcels of land suitable for commercial real estate near Arawa township in Papua New Guinea. What’s that tell you?”

Rachel had drunk too much wine for it to tell her anything. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it tells me Cotter-McCann gave Alden Minerals an infusion of cash probably for a shitload of shares in that mine. When it starts to pay off, they’ll push Alden Minerals aside and clean up. It’s what they do; they’re sharks. Worse than sharks, some say. Even sharks stop eating when they’re full.”

“So Alden Minerals will probably fail.”

“‘Fail’ is not quite the right word. They’ll be subsumed. Either by Vitterman or Cotter-McCann. They went from A ball to the major leagues overnight. I doubt they can handle the pitching.”

“Ah.” She couldn’t put any of it together. “Thanks so much, Glen.”

“Of course. Hey, Melissa told me you’re making your way back out into the world.”

“She did?” Rachel swallowed a scream.

“You’ve got to come out to the house, meet Amelia. We’d love to see you guys.”

A wave of despair hit her. “We’d love that.”

“You okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Just got a cold.”

For a moment it felt like he might press the issue. But then he said, “Take care, Rachel.”

When Caleb rang the bell, she buzzed him up. She’d laid her evidence on the kitchen counter by a scotch glass and a bottle of the bourbon, but he didn’t notice it when he first came in. He looked distracted and worn out.

“You got a drink?”

She pointed at the bourbon.

He took a seat at the counter. He poured himself a drink, didn’t even notice the other items on the counter. “Hell of a day.”

“Oh, you had one too,” she said.

He took a long pull on the glass. “Sometimes I think Brian was right.”

“About what?”

“Getting married. Having a kid. It’s a lot of moving parts, lotta balls in the air.” He glanced at the items on the counter and his tone grew distracted. “So what needs lifting?”

“Nothing really.”