Page 96 of The Perfect Deception

Adam shook Dave’s hand. “Oh yeah? That sounds great. I’d love in­for­ma­tion about it. I’m Adam Man­del, by the way, a friend of Dina’s.”

“Nice to meet you. Dina, the break­fast is ac­tu­ally open to ev­ery­one, if you’d like to join us.”

She plas­tered a smile on her face. “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

As Dave walked away, she stalked to the door. This was ridicu­lous. She couldn’t take any more of it.

Adam rushed to keep up with her, his long legs mak­ing it easy.

“Leave me alone, Adam. You’ve had your fun.”

He jumped for­ward un­til he could block her way. She thought about skirt­ing around him, but he folded his arms and looked at her like he’d like noth­ing bet­ter than to pick her up and dan­gle her in the air if she tried to get away.

“I’m not hav­ing fun, Dina. I’m try­ing to apol­o­gize. But you won’t let me.”

“No you’re not. You’re try­ing to make an im­pres­sion—with me and those ridicu­lous flow­ers, with my rabbi and with ev­ery­one at my tem­ple. But what you don’t get is I’m not in­ter­ested. I’m done. So you need to stop and leave me alone.”

She re­moved her heels and ran out of the syn­a­gogue, leav­ing Adam in the shad­ows.

On Mon­day, Adam passed the li­brary on his way to his fa­ther’s of­fice. He shook his head as he re­mem­bered Fri­day night in the syn­a­gogue. For a man who’d re­fused to al­low a woman to ever walk out on him again, he sure was fail­ing when it came to Dina. Be­cause she’d walked out on him twice so far.

Each time she left, the in­vis­i­ble bands around his chest tight­ened. And this lat­est time had left him with the knowl­edge that not only wasn’t there any­thing he could do about it, most likely, he was go­ing to have to suf­fer through it sev­eral more times, be­cause as he’d said to her rabbi, he was hop­ing she’d come back to him and he was go­ing to be pa­tient. And you didn’t lie to a rabbi.

He parked his car in the park­ing garage, in the spa­ces des­ig­nated for vis­i­tors to his fa­ther’s firm and swal­lowed the bile the rose in his throat. His fa­ther’s sec­re­tary had called him to this com­mand per­for­mance, in a suit, no less. He pulled on his blue silk tie be­fore read­just­ing it in the rearview mir­ror, left his car and took the el­e­va­tor up to the firm’s floor. There was no need to give his name to the re­cep­tion­ist, but he did any­way. There was noth­ing stop­ping him from walk­ing in like he be­longed—ex­cept he didn’t. So he waited for di­rec­tion and tried to keep his toe from tap­ping or his fin­gers from fid­dling with his tie.

A mo­ment later, his fa­ther’s sec­re­tary opened the door. “Come on in, Adam. Your fa­ther is in the con­fer­ence room.”

Adam fol­lowed her down the war­ren of hall­ways to the glassed-in con­fer­ence room. At the head of the teak ta­ble was his fa­ther. Seated around the ta­ble were the se­nior part­ners and stand­ing be­hind them were the part­ners and ju­nior part­ners. Adam swal­lowed as his throat went dry. When she opened the door, there was no other re­course than to en­ter. James was there as well.

Great, I’ve been in­vited to watch James as he’s given the ju­nior part­ner po­si­tion. Thanks, Dad.

He leaned against the wall, hop­ing not to be no­ticed.

His fa­ther rose and the room grew silent.

“About a month ago, a for­mer para­le­gal claimed—for the sec­ond time—that my son had not given her a mo­tion to file. Two dif­fer­ent cases, two dif­fer­ent out­comes, nei­ther of them good. De­spite my son’s protests oth­er­wise, she swore he’d never given her the ma­te­rial. She also said he was throw­ing her un­der the bus. As a re­sult, the en­tire para­le­gal de­part­ment banded to­gether in her de­fense. She had a plau­si­ble story, he had a prob­lem­atic rep­u­ta­tion and while there was no way to ver­ify her claim, there was no way to re­fute it, ei­ther. And so I, as the head of this firm, fired my son. I put the well-be­ing of this firm above my love for my son,” he paused and cleared his throat be­fore con­tin­u­ing, “some­thing for which I will be for­ever ashamed.”

Adam’s pulse pounded in his ears. It was the only sound, as the rest of the room was silent.

Noah looked down, be­fore rais­ing his head and meet­ing the gaze of ev­ery­one in the room. When he reached Adam, he paused, nod­ded and con­tin­ued.

“It took an­other woman, my son’s ex-girl­friend, to make me see the er­ror of my ways. In the process, she pro­vided proof—proof I should have been able to find—that Adam is com­pletely in­no­cent. His ac­cuser made up the story in or­der to try to get an­other man in this firm the pro­mo­tion, and hope­fully, to get him in­ter­ested in her.”

Adam stag­gered and reached be­hind him to hold onto the wall. His fa­ther had just ad­mit­ted a mis­take to ev­ery­one in this room.

“Prior to the ac­cu­sa­tions, both Adam and James were be­ing con­sid­ered for ju­nior part­ner. The ac­cu­sa­tion, and his sub­se­quent dis­missal, re­moved my son from con­sid­er­a­tion. The ac­cuser’s re­tal­i­a­tion in­cluded poi­son­ing other firms against my son, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for him to find an­other job.”

Ev­ery­one turned to look at each other, and Adam saw the shock on their faces. A few, who no­ticed him, looked sym­pa­thetic. Some, like Paul and John, who had avoided him, looked em­bar­rassed.

“As of to­day, we are su­ing Ash­ley Pe­ters for slan­der. We are tak­ing out a full-page ad in all the ma­jor law pub­li­ca­tions re­fut­ing the charges, stand­ing be­hind Adam and restor­ing his rep­u­ta­tion. I will be ask­ing Adam for a list of all the firms he’s sub­mit­ted ré­sumés to and will per­son­ally call their man­ag­ing part­ners to ex­plain the sit­u­a­tion. Then Adam will have a choice. He can re­turn to work here as a ju­nior part­ner—James, you will keep your new ti­tle as well, how­ever you will be on pro­ba­tion be­cause of your ties to Ash­ley—or he can work for any other firm he chooses. The choice will be his. But should he choose to re­join us, he will be wel­comed by all with open arms.”

One by one, ev­ery­one in the room be­gan to clap, un­til the sound of hands to­gether was deaf­en­ing. Those who were seated, rose. Those who knew Adam was in the room turned to­ward him and even­tu­ally, ev­ery­one was clap­ping at him. He bowed his head un­til the room si­lenced. Then, he walked to his fa­ther.

“You and I have had our dif­fer­ences over the years,” he said, “ and I sus­pect we will con­tinue to have them. But it takes an hon­or­able man to pub­licly ad­mit when he’s wrong. I ap­pre­ci­ate what you’ve said, and I’d be happy to ac­cept the po­si­tion of ju­nior part­ner here. How­ever, as much as I owe my fa­ther re­spect for what he has said to­day, I would not be here if it weren’t for Dina Ja­cobs. She be­lieved in me from the very be­gin­ning, even when our re­la­tion­ship was new and she could have eas­ily walked away and as­sumed the worst. But she didn’t. And af­ter we broke up, which was com­pletely my fault, she had a choice. She could have kept her knowl­edge to her­self, writ­ten me off and for­got­ten all about me. But in­stead, she went to my fa­ther. Now, as I’m sure all of you have fig­ured out, my fa­ther isn’t the eas­i­est man to con­front.”

A smat­ter­ing of laugh­ter met Adam’s re­mark and he smiled.

“But she didn’t let him in­tim­i­date her. She went to him and told him of his er­ror, and she did it in a way that made him lis­ten to her and even be­lieve her. I’m sure most of you will be­lieve me when I say that’s not an easy thing to do. But she did it.”