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Abby hung up, then dialed Scott.
“I amsosorry, Abby.”
Tempted for a moment to play dumb, she decided Scott had enough going on in his life without adding to his stress levels, so, instead, she reiterated Cara’s words. “It’s okay. It’s idle talk.”
“But it’s not true. How can they publish something like this? It’s... it’s slander.”
“Well, I’m not going to say I’m thrilled that people are speculating about my mental health, but I doubt quoting a source counts as slander, and as for the rest, nothing else they said iswrong.”
After a beat of silence, surprise colored his tone. “But what about the work you do with Gen?”
“Oh, it’s work, for sure,” Abby assured him. “But not full time, and I don’t get paid much for it.”
Scott spluttered for a moment before she took pity on him.
“It’s... complicated? I think HR kind of took pity on me after Will died. I’d quit being an EMT, and then I showed up, trying to volunteer in pediatrics—his department—with this dog. Therapy dogs are a lot more prevalent, now, but they weren’t back when we started, so they didn’t quite know what to do with me. They offered me a kind of contractor position. I’m under Hospital Activities, but I do my own thing, make my own schedule. I’m not on-call, but I am, and I’m not full time or salaried. They told me when I started, they couldn’t pay me much, but I didn’t mind. We don’t need much, and Will’s life insurance was...a lot.”
Abby swallowed. When the first check came in, she’d fallen to pieces over it. Crumpled to the floor, sobbing, unable to touch the little slip of paper.
Blood money, she’d called it.I’d rather have him back.
Then, Gen, still little more than a gawky pup, had crawled into her lap and grabbed a lock of her hair. She’d been distracted enough to make it through the next minute, the next hour, the next day.
“Anyway, we were both so busy with school and stuff, we didn’t do a big wedding, so my parents helped with the down-payment on our place instead of throwing a huge, fancy bash. After Will died... Well, we’d been smart with our money, and with our planning. Plus, the car that clipped him was a corporate vehicle, so there was a settlement, there, too. I paid off the mortgage, but the rest... I kind of put away. Like I said, Gen and I don’t need much, and there hasn’t been anything else to do with it, so...”
“Abby, what are we talking, here?”
She bit her lip. Will had been a successful pediatric surgeon, despite his relatively young age at his death. He’d done well for himself, for them. They’d taken out life insurance policies for both of them for the standard ten times their rate of pay.
“Umm, a little over three million? I haven’t checked it lately, but in March I meet with an accountant, for taxes. With interest, I think it’s about four million, now.”
Scott choked. “You have more saved than my last contract paid me.”
“But I thought the Raptors...”
“Oh, yeah, no, they did. I meant in San Diego.”
“Gotcha.” She paused, gathering her courage. “I know you like to pay for stuff, but that’s why I always offer to split it. I can make my own way.”
Scott didn’t answer for a long moment.
Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, but he had refused to talk about his friends on the team, about Lindsay, and now they were in the middle of this mess together. She wasn’t going to make it worse by ignoring yet another thing that could divide them.
“I didn’t realize. I assumed, of course, you were working, but I didn’t want to hazard a guess at what you made. You’re independent; I’ve always respected that, but I wanted to take care of you.” He huffed a laugh. “I guess you didn’t need me to, did you?”
“Scott, no, it’s not like that. I didn’t want—don’t want—you to ever think I’m with you for what you can do for me. I hate how this money came to me, I hate talking about it because it’s so wrapped up in what happened, but if it can do anything good, maybe it can be proof I love you for you. I don’t need you. But I still want you.” The line went quiet again, but it wasn’t a fraught sort of silence anymore.
“Well, I’ll talk to publicity and my agent and see what they think. They might want to push back, or they might think the best course of action is to play dumb. It’ll probably depend on whether the story goes viral. It’s bad timing, though. Mark called me yesterday to let me know the judge is ready to schedule our next hearing. I guess Lindsay thought it would be worthwhile to expedite the psych eval.”
“I expected it to take longer.” Abby tucked the phone between her chin and shoulder as she scooped a cup of kibble into Gen’s bowl, then ran water over it in the sink.
“Me too, but I guess you can pay to have them process it faster. I only met with him last week.”
Dancing around her feet, Gen followed the bowl to her mat on the floor, then waited until Abby gave her the quietokayto eat before burying her nose in it.
“So, when will it be?”
“He said after Thanksgiving. We’re getting into the holidays, but Mark thinks this case is moving a lot faster than normal.”