“He wants to meet without lawyers,” Ruth said. “Just you. His exact words were: I need to tell her myself.”
Cloe was standing in her bedroom doorway with the phone pressed to her ear and Mac visible through the open living room door, sitting with Dave who had moved on from structural engineering to explaining Pluto’s reclassification to Mac with the patient authority of someone correcting a long-standing error.
“No,” Cloe said. “Not without lawyers. Not alone.”
“That’s what I told him,” Ruth said. “He accepted. He’s asking for this afternoon. Two o’clock. My office. You, me, him, his lawyer.” A pause. “Cloe. Whatever he wants to say about Jonah, you need to hear it. It’s going to affect the settlement.”
She looked through the doorway at Dave explaining orbital resonance to Mac, who was
