Abandoned on a Snow Mountain, I Became a Tycoon's Obsession - Full EPISODE - video Dailymotion

Anmol Singh

Watch Abandoned on a Snow Mountain, I Became a Tycoon's Obsession - Full EPISODE - Anmol Singh on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:05:27You think you've won?

00:05:28You think you've won?

00:05:29You have money?

00:05:31You have a name?

00:05:32You have him?

00:05:33She tipped her chin at the corner.

00:05:35You spent seven years on Preston Marsh.

00:05:38You spent seven years on Preston Marsh.

00:05:39Seven years.

00:05:40He never looked at you once.

00:05:43It means money can't buy a man's affection.

00:05:46You know what that means?

00:05:48In the corner.

00:05:49You lost me.

00:05:50You lost me.

00:05:50Damien set down his phone.

00:05:51He did not stand.

00:05:53He did not speak.

00:05:53He just looked.

00:05:55He'll never love you Sloane.

00:05:57I let her have the pause.

00:05:58Even after all of this.

00:05:59Then I gave her my answer.

00:06:01She tilted her head.

00:06:02Regan.

00:06:02Eyebrows up.

00:06:03Still posturing.

00:06:04A man who can be picked up by you with a smile.

00:06:06I held her gaze.

00:06:07Still expecting me to cry.

00:06:08His lab was built with my money.

00:06:09Her face flickered.

00:06:11His instruments were bought with my money.

00:06:13The paper he was about to publish used my data.

00:06:16The first authorship he was angling for was ill from 48 hours of my sleeplessness.

00:06:20He picked up an empty suit.

00:06:22An empty suit with my data printed on the inside lining.

00:06:25So in about three weeks you'll be standing next to a naked suit.

00:06:27With no career.

00:06:28No grant.

00:06:29Tenure track.

00:06:30No future paper.

00:06:31Tell me what the man is worth to you then.

00:06:33She opened her mouth.

00:06:34I cut her off.

00:06:37My seven years are not for sale Regan.

00:06:39Not at your price.

00:06:41Not at any price.

00:06:43Get out.

00:06:43She did not move.

00:06:44A footstep behind her.

00:06:46From the corridor.

00:06:46Garcia in the doorway.

00:06:47Two security guards a respectful distance behind.

00:06:50Sloane.

00:06:51You think you've cleaned all of it up?

00:06:52She picked up the lilies on her way out.

00:06:54Wait until the audit drops.

00:06:55Then ask Damien Crane what he found.

00:06:57The door closed behind her.

00:06:59I turned my head toward the corner chair.

00:07:01Damien was already standing.

00:07:02He did not look at me.

00:07:03He was looking at the door Regan had just walked through.

00:07:05His jaw was set in a way I had not seen since the tent in Rangel.

00:07:09He turned to me.

00:07:10The look I caught for the first time was a man assessing exactly how angry he should let himself become.

00:07:15Damien sat back down on the edge of the bed.

00:07:16He took his time.

00:07:17He did not rush.

00:07:18He laced his fingers across his knee.

00:07:19He breathed in once, deeply, the way I had seen him do at family dinners when his mother said something

00:07:23cruel and he chose not to make it a war.

00:07:24Sloan.

00:07:25She has mastered clues that we do not know.

00:07:27That's right.

00:07:28It's related to auditing.

00:07:29About the audit.

00:07:30I waited.

00:07:32He was choosing his word.

00:07:33I was going to wait until tomorrow to bring this up.

00:07:36The audit is not finished.

00:07:37The number is not final.

00:07:38How bad?

00:07:39Six million unaccounted for is the floor, not the ceiling.

00:07:44Six million dollars was not a clerical error.

00:07:47Six million dollars was a pattern.

00:07:50Six million through what?

00:07:52A shell company registered in Delaware.

00:07:55Address goes to a peepo box.

00:07:57The signatory is a name I'm running down.

00:07:59The wire pattern matches equipment vendor payments.

00:08:02Diving rigs that never arrived.

00:08:03Drill bits that were never installed.

00:08:05Travel reimbursements for trips no one took.

00:08:08For seven years.

00:08:10For at least the last four.

00:08:12I closed my eyes.

00:08:13The money had never mattered.

00:08:15My family had given the foundation more in any single year than what Preston had pocketed in four.

00:08:20What mattered was the shape of it.

00:08:21The shape was he had been planning this since at least four years ago.

00:08:25Since the year he and I had taken a sabbatical month to Iceland together.

00:08:28The year he had asked me to marry him and then walked it back the same evening because it wasn't

00:08:33the right time.

00:08:38Damien.

00:08:39Hmm.

00:08:40I opened my eyes.

00:08:42What does Reagan have that we don't?

00:08:46Her name on a wire.

00:08:48Two of them.

00:08:49So far.

00:08:54She's not the graduate studies she's been pretending to be.

00:08:57Damien laid it out on the rolling tray table at my elbow.

00:08:59Two wire transferals.

00:09:00Both routed through the same Delaware shell.

00:09:02Both signed at the receiving end by our snow.

00:09:04The amounts were not enormous.

00:09:0584,000.

00:09:06112,000.

00:09:07Both wired in the last 14 months.

00:09:09Both dated to weeks Reagan had been listed on Preston's expedition minused as a junior research.

00:09:1284,000 for what?

00:09:14Equipment line item.

00:09:16A piece of sonar gear that was never delivered.

00:09:18She's 26.

00:09:19She's 26 on paper.

00:09:22Her undergrad was an internship at a foundation in Connecticut whose director sat on three of Preston's grant review panels.

00:09:30She wasn't his accident.

00:09:31She was his hire.

00:09:33She was his hire.

00:09:37How long have you known?

00:09:40Since the second wire cleared.

00:09:43Four months.

00:09:46I was building.

00:09:48I needed the chain to be unbreakable.

00:09:51If you'd come to me sooner, I'd have moved sooner.

00:09:57I didn't know to come to you.

00:09:59I know.

00:10:00A nurse pushed open the door, looked at my face, looked at the tray of documents, looked at Damon and

00:10:04quietly backed out.

00:10:05Damon picked up a fresh sheet from the bottom of the stack.

00:10:07He turned it so I could see.

00:10:08It was a screen grab of a private social media account locked.

00:10:10One of two followers.

00:10:11The vestring handle of a core counter.

00:10:13The hand was not mine.

00:10:14The post was dated two years before Reagan had supposedly emailed Preston out of the blue.

00:10:18The pin post was a photograph of Preston and Krasim Shursi.

00:10:20Tarhan Ben Benzible.

00:10:22The wound throbbed once.

00:10:23I let it.

00:10:25Damien.

00:10:25Hmm?

00:10:27She's been with him for...

00:10:28At minimum, three years.

00:10:33Three years.

00:10:34Three years was an entire fellowship cycle.

00:10:37Three years was a lab move.

00:10:38Three years was every conference where Preston had told me he was too overwhelmed to bring me as a guest.

00:10:43Three years was the time during which I had been planning a wedding in my head while writing his grants

00:10:47in my hand.

00:10:48I picked the photograph back up.

00:10:50The hand on Preston's cheek had a small mark at the wrist, the same shape as a beauty mark Reagan

00:10:55had, very pale, almost invisible against her skin.

00:10:58I had once told her that mark was lovely.

00:11:01She had told me she hated it.

00:11:06How long until the audit drops?

00:11:09Friday.

00:11:10Three days.

00:11:11How long until the criminal complaint files?

00:11:15Riley Pope has already been brought in for questioning by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

00:11:18Preston?

00:11:19He'll be charged Tuesday.

00:11:20Federal jurisdiction.

00:11:21The beacon falls under interstate field safety regulations.

00:11:24Reagan?

00:11:24Reagan is more delicate.

00:11:25The wires are evidence of fraud.

00:11:27The relationship is evidence of motive.

00:11:28The recording is evidence of intent.

00:11:30But she'll lawyer up fast.

00:11:31I expect her to flip on Preston by the end of next week.

00:11:34And the academic side.

00:11:35Marsh's ethics committee convenes Wednesday at his university.

00:11:38We are providing the audit, the recording, and the wires.

00:11:41Outcome is predictable.

00:11:42He'll be stripped of his appointment, his doctoral supervision rights, his five most recent publications, and the federal grant he

00:11:47was about to sign.

00:11:49Reeves.

00:11:50Damien did not blink.

00:11:52Reeves has known about the embezzlement for at least two years.

00:11:55I closed my eyes.

00:11:56He nominated you for the independent fellowship in part to diffuse internal questions about who your name kept appearing on

00:12:01the Foundation paperwork and never on the bylines.

00:12:03That's why he called me.

00:12:05That's why he called me.

00:12:06A door opened.

00:12:06I opened my eyes.

00:12:07My father was standing in the doorway.

00:12:09Eyes red.

00:12:10Coats till on.

00:12:11The wrinkles on his face deeper than I remembered.

00:12:13You.

00:12:13Damien stood up.

00:12:14He stopped two feet from Damien and put both hands on Damien's shorts.

00:12:16He did not look at me as he passed.

00:12:19My father had not cried in front of me since my mother's funeral.

00:12:22He did not cry now.

00:12:23Exactly.

00:12:23But he sat on the edge of my bed and held my left hand the one with Damien's signet still

00:12:27on the forefinger.

00:12:28And he did not let go for a long time.

00:12:30Dad.

00:12:30Don't talk.

00:12:31He held my hand.

00:12:32I have to.

00:12:33Sloan.

00:12:34Don't talk.

00:12:34He looked at the signet.

00:12:35He looked at Damien standing very still by the window.

00:12:38How long?

00:12:4020 years sir.

00:12:42I know that.

00:12:43I mean the ring.

00:12:45Five days.

00:12:46Dad nodded once.

00:12:48Slow.

00:12:54The Pierce's boy.

00:12:55The one who used to follow Sloan around the orchard at Thanksgiving.

00:12:59And pretend he didn't care if she shared her dessert.

00:13:03Yes sir.

00:13:04Dad almost smiled.

00:13:06I told your father at the time.

00:13:08I told him what sir?

00:13:09That you were going to be the kind of man who ran out of things to fear by the age

00:13:13of 30.

00:13:18He didn't believe me.

00:13:20He was wrong.

00:13:23Sweetheart.

00:13:26The foundation is mine again.

00:13:29As of this morning.

00:13:31The board approved a clean break from the Marsh Laboratory and all of his ongoing projects.

00:13:37The audit will be public when it drops.

00:13:40Your name will be cleared as of Friday morning.

00:13:43The donor wall in Cambridge will be re-engraved with your sole credit on the Whitfield Climate Initiative.

00:13:50Dad, that's-

00:13:51That's seven years of your life, Sloan.

00:13:53Not a favor.

00:13:54He pressed my hand.

00:13:56He stood up.

00:13:57He kissed my forehead the way he had when I was a child home from school with Strep.

00:14:04I'm going to step outside and let you rest.

00:14:06I'll be in the hall.

00:14:07I'll be in the hall.

00:14:08He looked at Damien.

00:14:09Crane.

00:14:10Sir.

00:14:11When she's better, we talk.

00:14:15Yes, sir.

00:14:19The door closed.

00:14:22I looked at Damien.

00:14:24I had known him for a long time.

00:14:27He gave you permission?

00:14:28He sat back down on the edge of the bed.

00:14:31He didn't have to.

00:14:32I never asked him for any.

00:14:37But yes, he did.

00:14:41I'll wait until you're ready.

00:14:44For what?

00:14:46He almost smiled.

00:14:47Not quite.

00:14:48Everything.

00:15:01Friday morning.

00:15:02The audit dropped.

00:15:03It hit the internet at 6 a.m.

00:15:05Eastern.

00:15:05A leak coordinated, presumably, by Damien's communications team went to a science investigative reporter at a respected outlet.

00:15:12By 8, the headline had been picked up by every major US paper.

00:15:15By 10, the hashtag was trending.

00:15:17Garcia walked into my room with a tablet and a tray of fresh squeezed orange juice.

00:15:22216 articles since 6.

00:15:24She tapped the screen.

00:15:27Glaciotology star falls in Whitefield Foundation fraud probe inside the Reguling cover-up.

00:15:32I scrolled.

00:15:33Photographs of Preston.

00:15:34Photographs of the Rangel camp.

00:15:36A still from the radio archive showing the timestamp on Preston's order to disable my beacon.

00:15:41A photograph of the equipment crate I had spent the night inside, with claw marks down the side.

00:15:46Taken by a federal investigator the morning after my evacuation.

00:15:49The comments were brutal.

00:15:51If this is what academic excellence looks like, this man let his girlfriend bleed in the snow for a grand.

00:15:57The deputy who turned off her beacon should be in handcuffs by lunch.

00:16:00I scrolled until I found Regan.

00:16:02She had pre-empted the audit.

00:16:05Sloan Whitfield could have died.

00:16:07Cry harder.

00:16:09I closed the tablet.

00:16:11How is Preston taking it?

00:16:12He has not been seen leaving his apartment.

00:16:14The university has placed him on administrative leave pending Wednesday's hearing.

00:16:17Riley Pope has been charged.

00:16:19He pleaded out.

00:16:2018 months federal with cooperation.

00:16:22Regan Snow's lawyer issued a statement at 7am claiming she will fully cooperate.

00:16:26Dr. Reeves announced his retirement at 6.30.

00:16:29Effective immediately.

00:16:30The university accepted within the hour.

00:16:33I exhaled.

00:16:34The wound did not mind anymore.

00:16:36In a meeting.

00:16:37He'll be back at noon.

00:16:37He left this for you.

00:16:39She slid a small white card onto the tray.

00:16:41I picked it up.

00:16:42By Saturday, I was sitting upright in a chair by the window.

00:16:46By Sunday, I was walking the corridor twice a day with a nurse at my elbow.

00:16:49By Monday, they had moved me out of the ICU and into a regular suite on the 14th floor.

00:16:54Where the view stretched all the way down across the East River.

00:16:57The flowers had started arriving Friday afternoon and had not stopped.

00:17:00The first arrangement was from my graduate school cohort.

00:17:03The second from the foundation board.

00:17:05The third and this one had made me sit up from the chair of the National Science Foundation.

00:17:09Who had written a personal note saying he had been appalled.

00:17:12And that I should consider.

00:17:13When I was well enough picking up the principal investigator role on the project.

00:17:16That had been Preston's.

00:17:17The fourth came with no card.

00:17:19You're upright.

00:17:21I'm upright.

00:17:23How does it feel?

00:17:24Like I have a hole in my chest but a much smaller one than yesterday.

00:17:28He almost smiled.

00:17:29From you?

00:17:31Hmm.

00:17:33Narcissus.

00:17:34From the lake house.

00:17:36Hmm.

00:17:39Damien.

00:17:40He met my eyes.

00:17:42How long?

00:17:45The flower?

00:17:47Since you were 12?

00:17:49Not the flower.

00:17:50He sat on the edge of the bed.

00:17:51I sat with that.

00:17:52Sloan.

00:17:5320 years.

00:17:53I was 29.

00:17:5420 years.

00:17:55That meant when I had cried to him about my freshman year boyfriend at 16 he had already known.

00:17:59That meant every time.

00:18:00Over the long stretch of years.

00:18:01He had appeared at the edge of my life with the precise timing of a person who was paying very

00:18:05close attention.

00:18:06Without ever announcing himself.

00:18:07I looked at the signet on my left hand.

00:18:11Damien.

00:18:13Hmm.

00:18:17Why didn't you ever say?

00:18:19Damien took a long time to answer.

00:18:21The light from the window had begun to thin.

00:18:23The kind of New York winter dusk that turns everything blue.

00:18:26When you were 12, you were 12.

00:18:28There was nothing to say.

00:18:30When you were 16, you were dating that boy.

00:18:32You were happy.

00:18:33There was nothing to say.

00:18:34When you were 19, you came home from college and told me you'd met a graduate student named Preston Marsh.

00:18:41You want to know what I thought of him.

00:18:45I told you he was fine.

00:18:46You told me he was fine.

00:18:49He wasn't fine.

00:18:51I knew he wasn't fine.

00:18:53But you wanted permission.

00:18:55You were not asking me what I thought of him.

00:18:59You were asking me to bless what you had already decided.

00:19:02You blessed it anyway.

00:19:05I blessed it anyway.

00:19:06Why?

00:19:07He looked down at his hands.

00:19:09Because if I'd said no, you would have done it anyway.

00:19:11And I would have lost you for the next decade instead of being able to sit across a holiday table

00:19:14from you twice a year.

00:19:17I made a calculation.

00:19:19The calculation was wrong.

00:19:21He looked up.

00:19:23I would have made a different one.

00:19:25If I had known.

00:19:27Known what?

00:19:29That he would put a hole in your chest.

00:19:30The room held the sentence.

00:19:32I felt the wound stir.

00:19:33It did not hurt the same way anymore.

00:19:35It hurt differently.

00:19:36Like something was being said through it.

00:19:37And not done to it.

00:19:39It wasn't his hole.

00:19:40It was an ice shard.

00:19:41It was his hole.

00:19:42He left you with it.

00:19:44He turned off your beacon.

00:19:46He drove away.

00:19:47He did not soften the statement.

00:19:48The shape of the wound is ice full.

00:19:50And you crossed the country.

00:19:52The cause of the wound is Preston Marsh.

00:19:54I would have crossed any country.

00:19:59Damien.

00:20:00He did not look away.

00:20:04I'm not gonna forgive him.

00:20:07I know.

00:20:08I'm not gonna take him back.

00:20:10I know.

00:20:19I'm not gonna take him back.

00:20:26I know.

00:20:26Take all the time you need.

00:20:27He stood.

00:20:28He bent forward.

00:20:29His lips brushed my forehead.

00:20:30Light.

00:20:30The way an older brother might.

00:20:32The way a person who had been disciplined about a feeling for a very long time might.

00:20:35When the door was finally cracked open.

00:20:37I have a meeting at 7.

00:20:38I'll be back at 9.

00:20:39Damien.

00:20:42Don't be late.

00:20:44He almost smiled.

00:20:45He left.

00:20:46The narcissist on the windowsill held their pale yellow in the blue light.

00:20:51Tuesday afternoon.

00:20:52Preston was arraigned.

00:20:53I did not watch the live stream.

00:20:55Garcia told me about it after the fact.

00:20:57Sitting in the chair by my bed with her tablet face down on her knee.

00:21:00She summarized in her efficient.

00:21:02Neutral voice.

00:21:03The same voice she used to read me the morning's flower deliveries.

00:21:06Preston had been processed through the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.

00:21:09The charges were read loud.

00:21:12Federal embezzlement and wire fraud.

00:21:14Knowingly dissaying a fellow team member's emergency equipment in a hazardous environment.

00:21:19And falsification of federal grant documentation.

00:21:32His bail had been set at $1 million.

00:21:35His attorney had argued he was not a flight risk.

00:21:38The prosecution had pointed to the Whitfield Foundation audit.

00:21:41And to a passport that.

00:21:43On inspection.

00:21:44Contained a sealed visa for a country with no extradition treaty.

00:21:48His bail was set at $1 million.

00:21:50His attorney argued he was not a flight risk.

00:21:53The prosecution pointed to the audit.

00:21:55And to a passport with a visa for a country with no extradition treaty.

00:21:59Bail remained at $1 million.

00:22:01His passport was revoked.

00:22:03How did he look?

00:22:05Smaller.

00:22:06Smaller?

00:22:07At faculty fundraisers he carried himself like a man waiting to be the smartest in any room.

00:22:12Today he carried himself like a man waiting to be told what to do.

00:22:16She set the tablet on the bedside table.

00:22:18Mr. Crane wants me to tell you Wednesday's ethics committee hearing has been moved to 10am.

00:22:23The university requested that you attend by video link.

00:22:25You may decline.

00:22:27I'll attend.

00:22:29Mr. Crane suspected you would.

00:22:33She rose.

00:22:34Is there anything else, Miss Whitfield?

00:22:36One thing.

00:22:39Reagan.

00:22:40She has not been arraigned.

00:22:41The U.S. Attorney's Office is finalizing terms.

00:22:44She will testify against Preston and Dr. Reeves.

00:22:46She will not be testifying against you.

00:22:48She will likely receive limited immunity on the fraud charges.

00:22:51A deferred prosecution agreement.

00:22:53Community service.

00:22:54And a permanent bar from federally funded research.

00:22:57She still has her social media.

00:22:58She still has her social media.

00:23:00The court cannot regulate that.

00:23:02That's fine.

00:23:04Let her have it.

00:23:05Mr. Crane will be displeased.

00:23:08Mr. Crane will live.

00:23:09Garcia paused.

00:23:11Halfway to the door.

00:23:12Garcia tilted her head a fraction.

00:23:13She almost laughed.

00:23:15She left.

00:23:15I lay back against the pillows and watched the narcissist tilt slowly toward the late afternoon sun.

00:23:20Wednesday morning.

00:23:2110 A.

00:23:21M. Garcia rolled in a portable monitor on a tray and angled it toward the bed.

00:23:25The ethics committee at Preston's University convened on screen seven children.

00:23:28Two chairs around a heavy wood table in a paneled room I had been inside.

00:23:32Once.

00:23:32During my own thesis defense.

00:23:34When Reeves had introduced me as one of his students.

00:23:36Reeves was not at the table today.

00:23:38He had retired Friday morning.

00:23:40The chair of the committee.

00:23:41A tall woman in her sixties whose hair was twisted into a low knot.

00:23:44Opened the proceedings.

00:23:46Mr. Marsh.

00:23:47Do you have anything to say before we begin?

00:23:49Preston rose from his seat at the foot of the table.

00:23:51He had aged a decade and five days.

00:23:53The polished hair was unkempt.

00:23:55The pressed shirt was open at the collar without a tie.

00:23:57I do.

00:23:59His voice was flatter than I had ever heard it.

00:24:01Whatever the committee decides, I accept.

00:24:05I acknowledge the irregularities in the funding records of the Regling Expedition.

00:24:10I acknowledge the irregularities in the authorship history of the manuscripts under review.

00:24:16On the day of the avalanche, I did not handle the evacuation of my team as I should have.

00:24:21The chair did not soften.

00:24:23I accept the consequences of those choices.

00:24:25The committee has reviewed the audit, the field radio archive, the wire records, and the personal contribution log of Sloan

00:24:32Whitstone.

00:24:32The committee has also reviewed the statement obtained this morning under cooperation agreement from Riley Cope.

00:24:40Do you acknowledge that you transmitted a radio instruction to disable Sloan Whitfile's emergency locator meeting?

00:24:49The room was very still.

00:24:52I do.

00:24:57At the time you transmitted that instruction, were you aware that Sloan Whitstown was injured?

00:25:01And at the edge of the camp perimeter?

00:25:07I do.

00:25:10Mr. Marsh, the committee finds the following.

00:25:14You have engaged in academic misconduct of the most serious kind.

00:25:19Your conduct on the day of the avalanche endangered the life of a fellow expedition member.

00:25:25The body of work submitted under your sole authorship for the past four years contains substantial material taken from the

00:25:32unpublished work of Sloan Whitnick without consent or attribution.

00:25:40The committee recommends that your tenure be revoked, your doctoral supervision rights be terminated, and the five most recent publications

00:25:47under your name be retracted.

00:25:48You be permanently barred from holding any federally funded academic appointment.

00:25:52The regular climate proxies grant should be revoked and the funds returned.

00:25:56Do you wish to respond?

00:25:59Preston was silent for a long time.

00:26:01No.

00:26:02Then he sat back down.

00:26:08The chair rose.

00:26:09The committee rose with her.

00:26:10This hearing is adjourned.

00:26:12The screen went black.

00:26:18I sat for a moment in the dim hospital room.

00:26:21Garcia rolled the monitor away.

00:26:27It's done.

00:26:30It's done.

00:26:39He came on Thursday, not by appointment.

00:26:41There's a man at security in the lobby asking to see you.

00:26:44He's same.

00:26:45He said his name was Preston Marsh.

00:26:47I had told Garcia.

00:26:49He said he doesn't expect you to say yes.

00:26:52Let him up.

00:26:53That I would receive him.

00:26:54I had thought about it carefully.

00:26:55I had thought about it the way Damien thought about a chain of evidence not for spite, not for forgiveness,

00:27:00but to close the circuit.

00:27:01I had spent seven years inside that circuit.

00:27:03I needed to walk out under my own power.

00:27:06Damien was in a meeting on the other side of town.

00:27:08I had not told him I had agreed to this.

00:27:10I had not told him I had not agreed to this either.

00:27:12The door opened.

00:27:13Preston stood in the doorway.

00:27:15He did not come in.

00:27:16He looked exactly as he had on the video feed except smaller, somehow, in person, the way Garcia had said.

00:27:21The charcoal suit replaced by jeans and a sweater that did not fit him quite right.

00:27:25The glass is askew.

00:27:34Sloane.

00:27:35Get up.

00:27:36I won't.

00:27:37I'm not asking.

00:27:38He stayed where he was.

00:27:39I came to apologize.

00:27:44He breathed in once.

00:27:45Out once.

00:27:47I owe you an apology I cannot make in two pages.

00:27:51I wrote it badly.

00:27:53Every grant.

00:27:55Every piece of equipment.

00:27:57Every late night.

00:28:00I knew.

00:28:01I always knew.

00:28:03I told myself a story about it that let me sleep.

00:28:06And the night of the avalanche.

00:28:08I told Riley to turn off the beacon.

00:28:13I told myself the Whitfields would send a plane.

00:28:16I told myself.

00:28:19You would always have a way out.

00:28:21That's what I told myself.

00:28:24So leaving you in the snow had no consequence.

00:28:34That's what I told myself.

00:28:36The room held it.

00:28:38I let it hold.

00:28:50Preston.

00:28:51He looked up.

00:28:52Get off the floor.

00:28:55I won't.

00:28:56You will.

00:28:59Because this is my room.

00:29:00In my hospital.

00:29:01In my city.

00:29:02And I'm telling you to.

00:29:04He got off the floor.

00:29:04He stood near the foot of my bed.

00:29:06Three things.

00:29:07Hands at his sides.

00:29:08Head still bowed.

00:29:09One.

00:29:10I am not retracting any of the charges.

00:29:13The federal case will proceed.

00:29:15Your career will not survive it.

00:29:17That is not negotiable.

00:29:20I haven't.

00:29:22Two.

00:29:23I will not be writing a victim impact statement that asks the court for leniency.

00:29:28I will be writing one that asks the court to apply the full weight of the statute.

00:29:33You are free to write your own.

00:29:34You are free to ask Dr. Revals to write his own.

00:29:38Understood.

00:29:39Three.

00:29:42I looked at him for a long time.

00:29:45He had once been a man I would have crossed any distance to please.

00:29:48There had been a year possibly two when I had organized my entire life around the question of what Preston

00:29:53would think.

00:29:54I looked at him now and I felt nothing.

00:29:56Not contempt.

00:29:57Not pity.

00:29:58Not love.

00:29:59Not even anger.

00:30:00A clean nothing.

00:30:01The way you might look at a coat you wore through college.

00:30:03Hanging in the back of a closet.

00:30:05And feel surprised that you had ever fit into it.

00:30:12I do not accept it.

00:30:18Not because it isn't sincere.

00:30:20Today, it might be.

00:30:22I think it might be.

00:30:24What I have learned, in seven years of you, is that your sincerity is a renewable resource.

00:30:30It comes back every time the consequences arrive.

00:30:33It always sound the same.

00:30:36It always asks the same thing, which is for me to absorb the cost.

00:30:41I'm done absorbing the cost.

00:30:46You will live with what you did.

00:30:49I will not be helping you live with it.

00:30:52For a moment I thought he might say something more some version of the speech.

00:30:55Refine now to its purest form.

00:30:57That he had been delivering to me.

00:30:58In fragments.

00:30:59For seven years.

00:31:00He didn't.

00:31:00He closed his eyes once.

00:31:02He opened them.

00:31:03I understand.

00:31:04He walked to the door.

00:31:05In the doorway.

00:31:06He paused.

00:31:07He did not look back.

00:31:08Sloan.

00:31:10Yes.

00:31:11Be happy.

00:31:14The door closed behind him.

00:31:16I sat alone in the hospital suite with the late afternoon light moving slowly across the floor.

00:31:20I waited to feel something.

00:31:22After a long time, I noticed what I felt was the absence of something.

00:31:25A weight I had been carrying since the year I was 22.

00:31:29For seven years I carried that weight.

00:31:31I turned my life into a project just to be seen.

00:31:35I piled up my efforts as evidence.

00:31:38But I don't need to be seen by him anymore.

00:31:43When I had decided that the rest of my life was going to be a project of making one specific

00:31:48man see me.

00:31:48It was no longer there.

00:31:50I picked up my phone.

00:31:52I texted Damien.

00:31:53Come back when you can.

00:31:55He answered within 10 seconds.

00:31:56On my way.

00:31:59Damien did not knock.

00:32:00The door to my hospital suite opened 12 minutes after Preston walked out of it.

00:32:04And Damien stood in the doorway with snow still melting on his shoulders.

00:32:07He did not look at me first.

00:32:09He looked at the chair where Preston had been kneeling.

00:32:11He looked at the spot on the carpet where Preston's knees had pressed two indentations.

00:32:15He looked at the trace of cologne.

00:32:17Preston's.

00:32:17Faint.

00:32:18Civilian still hanging in the air.

00:32:20He crossed the room in five strides.

00:32:23Did he touch you?

00:32:26Damien.

00:32:28Sloan.

00:32:30Did he touch you?

00:32:32No.

00:32:37His thumbs moved across my cheekbones.

00:32:40My temples.

00:32:41The line of my jaw checking.

00:32:43The way a person checks a child after they have fallen.

00:32:50I should not have left this morning.

00:32:52I asked Garcia to let him up.

00:32:57I know.

00:32:58She called me on the drive back.

00:33:00I broke three traffic laws.

00:33:02Damien.

00:33:03I would have broken 30.

00:33:11Look at me.

00:33:20I had not, in all the time I had known him.

00:33:23Seen Damien Crane afraid of anything.

00:33:25Not his father.

00:33:27Not his mother.

00:33:28Not a boardroom.

00:33:29Not a press conference.

00:33:31Not the leverage held over him by half of Manhattan.

00:33:35He was afraid now.

00:33:36He was afraid that I had spent 12 minutes in a room with the man I had loved for 7

00:33:40years.

00:33:41And that 12 minutes was all it took for me to forgive him.

00:33:46I told him no.

00:33:48I know.

00:33:50I told him to leave.

00:33:54I know.

00:33:55I am not going back to him.

00:33:58He closed his eyes.

00:33:59He pressed his forehead to mine.

00:34:01He stayed there.

00:34:02Breathing.

00:34:03For a long time.

00:34:09Sloan.

00:34:12I am about to be very selfish.

00:34:15Be selfish.

00:34:18I do not want to leave this room again.

00:34:21Then don't.

00:34:24He did not.

00:34:35He did not sleep that night.

00:34:37The chair he pulled up to my bed was leather and too small.

00:34:40He folded himself into it anyway.

00:34:42He held my left hand inside both of his.

00:34:45And watched the heart monitor as if it might lie if he looked away.

00:34:48Sometime around 3 a.m.

00:34:51I pretended to be asleep.

00:34:52Just to see what he would do.

00:34:54He stood up.

00:34:55He walked to the window.

00:34:56He looked out at the East River for 10 minutes.

00:34:59He turned back.

00:35:00He stood at the foot of the bed and watched my chest rise and fall.

00:35:04Counting.

00:35:04With the precision of a man who had once counted my pulse on a medevac.

00:35:08Then he came back to the chair.

00:35:09He leaned in.

00:35:11He pressed his lips.

00:35:12Very lightly.

00:35:13To the inside of my wrist where the ivy line went in.

00:35:15He whispered into my skin.

00:35:32I am sorry I did not come sooner.

00:35:36When?

00:35:40You were awake.

00:35:43Sooner when, Damien?

00:35:49Eight years ago.

00:35:51When?

00:35:52The night you came home from grad school for the holiday.

00:35:56You laughed at something Preston said about a sample I had never heard of.

00:35:59I went home and painted 700 Nassaville on a wall.

00:36:04And decided I would wait.

00:36:07I should have come for you that night.

00:36:10Damien.

00:36:12I would have.

00:36:13If I had known how it would end.

00:36:15He looked at the signet on my fourth finger.

00:36:19I bought this a long time ago.

00:36:22This ring?

00:36:23This ring?

00:36:25This ring.

00:36:26For me?

00:36:27For the day I stopped waiting.

00:36:31I waited far longer than I should have.

00:36:33I am not waiting an hour longer than I have to.

00:36:36Damien.

00:36:38Hmm.

00:36:40What are you telling me?

00:36:41He met my eyes.

00:36:48I am telling you that the rest of my life starts at sunrise.

00:36:51When you walk out of this hospital.

00:36:53You walk into my house.

00:37:00And you do not walk out of it again unless I am holding the door.

00:37:06The next person who tries to take you from me will spend the rest of his life regretting it.

00:37:11I had to go facilitate learning how to spiral some of it is.

00:37:15As if I am leaving.

00:37:29Good at the entrance zone.

00:37:37I did not find anything that I am traveling.

00:37:40I will find my esper Ahmad.

00:37:40Which I will find the замет of the entrance zone.

00:37:41way. He sent the orderly away. He scooped me out of the bed with one arm under my knees and

00:37:46one

00:37:46behind my shoulders and carried me, slowly, the length of the corridor to the elevator.

00:37:51I had walked. By then, the length of that corridor on my own three times. I did not need to

00:37:57be

00:37:57carried. I did not object. The elevator opened in the underground garage. A black idled. He set me

00:38:04down only long enough to open the door. And then he lifted me again into the back seat as if

00:38:08the

00:38:08act of placing me there himself was something he could not delegate. Garcia, in the front passenger's

00:38:13seat, did not turn around. The pulled out. Damien did not let go of my hand on the drive uptown.

00:38:30I bought the building. Which building? My building. I own the penthouse. I bought the rest of it last

00:38:36month. All of it? All of it. Why? I did not want strangers across a wall from you.

00:38:47Damien.

00:38:51The other residents have been compensated above market. They had 90 days to relocate. The last

00:38:57unit cleared on Friday. The building is empty except for the staff I vetted. And the floor I am going

00:39:03to

00:39:03put your father on if he wants it. My father has a house. He has a house. He may also

00:39:08have the eighth

00:39:09floor. Damien, you are being excessive. I am told I am being excessive.

00:39:18He brought my hand to his mouth. Tell me to stop. I am not telling you to stop.

00:39:25I can't bear to. The pulled into the garage.

00:39:32He carried me into the elevator. The doors opened directly into his foyer,

00:39:37into the wall of painted narcissists, and he set me down in front of it.

00:39:47Look. Look. I looked. A second wall. Opposite the first. Had been painted in my absence.

00:39:54Cores. The shapes of ice cores. 37 of them. One for every site I had drilled in 7 years.

00:40:01Labeled in white paint in my own handwriting. Which had been copied. Line for line. From photographs

00:40:06of the field journal Reagan had stolen. I could not speak.

00:40:17I commissioned it in March. The artist worked from your notebooks. I had the originals returned

00:40:22from the federal evidence locker on a temporary basis. They are now back in the locker.

00:40:27Damien.

00:40:28The paintings are yours. Welcome home Sloane.

00:40:32The first week in his apartment, I learned how he had been loving me for a long time.

00:40:36I learned it in small pieces. The way a person learns the contents of a house they have moved

00:40:40into without a tour. A bookshelf in the library held every paper I had ever published even the

00:40:45undergraduate ones. Even the conference posters bound in matching cloth and arranged in chronological

00:40:50order. A drawer in the kitchen held my mother's recipe for soda bread. Hand copied from her

00:40:55handwriting onto a card he had laminated. A folder in his study. Kept in a drawer he did not lock.

00:41:00Contained years of photographs of me. Clipped from family Christmas cards and university newsletters.

00:41:05And the society pages. I found the folder. On the sixth day. I did not tell him I had found

00:41:11it.

00:41:11I sat on the floor of his study and turned through the photographs in order. And at the back of

00:41:15the

00:41:15folder I found a single envelope. Sealed. Addressed to me in his handwriting and dated a long time ago.

00:41:21I almost opened it. I did not. I left it where it was. That night at dinner. I asked him.

00:41:26The letter in the back of the folder? He set his fork down. He did not pretend to misunderstand.

00:41:31You found it. What is it? It is what I would have said to you that night if I had

00:41:37come for you

00:41:37instead of painting the wall. You kept it. I kept everything.

00:41:43Damien. I have kept the napkin you wrote your phone number on when you were 11.

00:41:47I have kept the wrapper of the chocolate you split with me at your sister's Christensen.

00:41:50I have kept the program of every recital your mother dragged us to.

00:41:53I have kept the cockscrew you used to open the wine at your graduation dinner.

00:41:56I have kept the boarding pass you gave me when you came back from Iceland the year you turned 23

00:42:01and asked if I would pick you up from JF because your boyfriend had forgotten.

00:42:05He met my eyes. I have kept all of it because I had to keep something.

00:42:09I set my fork down too. How many marriages did your mother arrange for you?

00:42:14Three. You refused all three?

00:42:17I refused all three. For me?

00:42:22Sloan. Everything I have ever refused I refused for you.

00:42:25His mother came on Tuesday. She had not. In the seven years I dated Preston,

00:42:30sent me so much as a holiday card. She came now with a bouquet of pale pink peonies

00:42:35and a smile that did not reach her eyes. And she sat across from me in Damien's living room

00:42:39with the careful posture of a woman conducting a negotiation she expected to win.

00:42:44Damien stood by the window. He did not sit. He did not greet his mother.

00:42:48Sloan and dear, I came to welcome you.

00:42:50Mrs. Crane, I imagine all of this has been very overwhelming.

00:42:53The hospital, the press, my son's enthusiasm.

00:42:56His enthusiasm? He has always been intense.

00:42:59Particularly about the things he has wanted for a long time.

00:43:02I wonder if you have considered, my dear, whether intensity about this stage in your recovery

00:43:06is perhaps what you need.

00:43:07By the window, Damien turned. He did not raise his voice.

00:43:11Mother.

00:43:12Damien.

00:43:12You have ten seconds to walk out of this apartment.

00:43:17Damien, I am only...

00:43:19Eight seconds.

00:43:20You will not speak to me.

00:43:22Six seconds.

00:43:24The peonies, untouched on the coffee table, trembled with the vibration of the elevator

00:43:28returning to the foyer. She rose. She gathered her coat. She looked at me with the same smile

00:43:33pulled tight across her face. My dear, when this novelty passes...

00:43:38Two seconds.

00:43:38She left the elevator doors closed. Damien did not move for a long moment. Then he crossed

00:43:43the room and knelt in front of the chair where I was sitting. He took both my hands.

00:43:47Sloan.

00:43:49Damien.

00:43:50My mother will not be in this apartment again.

00:43:52Damien, she's your mother.

00:43:53My mother spent a long time telling me I would forget you if I tried hard enough. She introduced

00:43:57me to fourteen women whose family is my last name. She told my father at one point that

00:44:01I was an embarrassment to the family for refusing to marry.

00:44:03She does not get to walk in here now and call you a novelty.

00:44:05There is no version of this where you are second to anyone, Sloan. Not my mother.

00:44:10Not the company. Not the past.

00:44:13He pressed my knuckles to his mouth.

00:44:15Not for the rest of my life.

00:44:18He visited Preston in prison on a Wednesday. I did not know he had gone until he came home

00:44:23and sat across from me at the kitchen island and poured himself a glass of whiskey and told

00:44:27me.

00:44:28I went to see Marsh today.

00:44:29Damien.

00:44:30I had to.

00:44:32Why?

00:44:34I wanted him to see my face.

00:44:36He turned the glass in his fingers.

00:44:38He has been telling himself since the hearing that what happened to him was the system.

00:44:42That the audit broke him. That the federal prosecutor broke him. That the press broke

00:44:47him. I wanted him to know it was a man.

00:44:50What did you say to him?

00:44:53I sat across a steel table from her fourteen minutes. I didn't speak for the first ten.

00:44:57He waited. He was the one who broke. He asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted

00:45:01him to understand exactly what he had done. That he had touched a woman I had loved for

00:45:04a long time. That he had taken seven years of her life and gambled them on a press release.

00:45:10That he had left her in the snow because he assumed her family would clean it up.

00:45:13I told him that the part he didn't understand and would now have years to understand was

00:45:16that there had never been a moment in all the time he had known her when she was unprotected.

00:45:20I told him that he was alive only because you had asked me not to make a different decision.

00:45:23He drank.

00:45:26He cried.

00:45:28Damien.

00:45:28I did not enjoy it.

00:45:30Did you not?

00:45:31He set down the glass.

00:45:33I enjoyed every second of it.

00:45:34I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

00:45:36I sat across from a man who had hurt you and I watched him understand, for the first time,

00:45:40that he had been a small animal stepping on the tail of a much larger one.

00:45:44He came around the island.

00:45:45He stopped in front of me.

00:45:46He cupped the back of my neck the way he had cupped my skull in the tent.

00:45:50That is what I am, Sloane.

00:45:51With respect to you.

00:45:54I am the much larger animal.

00:45:56I will be that animal for the rest of your life.

00:45:58For any person who looks at you sideways, I am not going to pretend to be a different one.

00:46:01Tell me you understand.

00:46:02I understand.

00:46:05He pressed his forehead to mine.

00:46:08Good.

00:46:09Reagan called the apartment on a Thursday.

00:46:11She had been told, by every lawyer involved, not to.

00:46:15The no contact clause was in effect.

00:46:17She called anyway, through the main line of Crane Industries, asking to be put through to me by name.

00:46:22The receptionist forwarded the call to Garcia.

00:46:25Garcia forwarded it to Damien.

00:46:26Damien answered on speaker, in front of me, at the kitchen island.

00:46:54Mr. Crane, I would like you to listen to me very carefully, Ms. Snow.

00:46:58The reason your life is currently coming apart is not because I am vindictive.

00:47:02I am perfectly capable of vindictiveness.

00:47:05I have not yet been vindictive with you.

00:47:07The reason your life is coming apart is because the woman whose career you tried to take,

00:47:11whose data you stole, and whose recording I played in front of you in a tent at minus 31,

00:47:15asked me three months ago to leave you alone.

00:47:17I have honored that request.

00:47:22I have, how however, not asked any other person who knows you did to honor it.

00:47:26It turns out there are a great number of those people.

00:47:29They are removing you, on their own, from the rooms they control.

00:47:33The book editor at the publishing house was a former student of Sloan's.

00:47:36The donor coordinator at your father's foundation served on a Whitfield panel four years ago.

00:47:39Your fiancé's mother has been on the board of the Whitfield Climate Initiative since 2011.

00:47:44They are not retaliating, Ms. Snow.

00:47:46They are simply choosing.

00:47:47Mr. Crane, please!

00:47:49I am not the one you should be asking, Ms. Snow.

00:47:52He ended the call.

00:47:53He set down the phone.

00:47:54He looked at me.

00:47:56She will call again.

00:47:57She will eventually call you.

00:47:59She might.

00:48:00I would like permission, when she does, to make a small adjustment to her circumstances.

00:48:04What adjustment?

00:48:05A federal investigation currently dormant into the source of the wire that funded her Arege-Grewet internship.

00:48:11Damien.

00:48:11I will only act if you tell me to.

00:48:14I looked at him for a long moment.

00:48:15I did not tell him to.

00:48:17I also did not tell him not to.

00:48:18He read my face.

00:48:20He nodded once.

00:48:21He poured me a cup of tea.

00:48:22The nights were the hardest.

00:48:24I had not, in seven years with Preston, slept poorly.

00:48:28I had slept on his couches and in his tents and across his shoulders on long flights.

00:48:33And I had slept the way a person who believed in the structure of her life slept.

00:48:36The structure was gone now.

00:48:38The nights showed it.

00:48:39I did not tell Damien.

00:48:40He noticed anyway.

00:48:42He noticed on the fourth night, when he came up to bring me a book I had asked for, and

00:48:46found me sitting on the couch by the south windows with the lights off.

00:48:50He set the book down.

00:48:51He sat next to me.

00:48:52He did not ask.

00:48:54He simply pulled me, carefully, against his shoulder, and we sat that way until the city

00:48:59lights began to thin toward dawn.

00:49:01On the fifth night, he came up at ten.

00:49:03On the sixth night, he came up at nine.

00:49:05On the seventh night, he stayed.

00:49:07He did not ask permission.

00:49:09He came up with a small leather bag and a book and the smallest, most contained smile

00:49:13I had ever seen on his face.

00:49:15And he said,

00:49:17Sloan, I am going to sleep in the second bedroom.

00:49:19The door will be open.

00:49:20If you need me, you say my name.

00:49:22You do not have to get up.

00:49:23You do not have to ring a bell.

00:49:25You say my name and I will be in the room in under three seconds.

00:49:28Damien.

00:49:29I am not asking for anything.

00:49:34I know.

00:49:35I am telling you that for the rest of your life, if you say my name in the dark, I

00:49:39will

00:49:39be there in under three seconds.

00:49:41He kissed my forehead.

00:49:43He went into the second bedroom.

00:49:45He left the door open.

00:49:46I lay in my own bed for the first hour.

00:49:48I listened to the sounds of him in the next room, the small zipper of the leather bag,

00:49:52the click of a lamp, the soft rustle of a turned page.

00:49:55At 11.30, the page turning stopped.

00:49:57He had fallen asleep with the book on his chest.

00:50:00I got up.

00:50:01I crossed the hallway.

00:50:02I stood in the doorway of the second bedroom and watched him sleep a man in a charcoal pullover

00:50:07and reading glasses in a guest bed in his own house, lit by a single lamp.

00:50:11He had been waiting a long time to sleep in the same hallway as me.

00:50:15I went back to my room.

00:50:16I left both doors open.

00:50:18I slept the whole night through.

00:50:19He gave me the cranes on a Sunday.

00:50:21I had told him, two weeks earlier, in the way a person tells a story that no longer matters,

00:50:26that as a child I had folded a wish into a paper crane and put it in a jar on

00:50:30my bedroom windowsill.

00:50:31The wish had been for my mother to get well.

00:50:33My mother had not gotten well.

00:50:35I had stopped folding cranes.

00:50:37He had said nothing at the time.

00:50:38He had simply nodded.

00:50:40He led me to the library that Sunday morning.

00:50:42He opened the double doors.

00:50:44The room three stories of bookshelves.

00:50:46A leather sofa.

00:50:47His piano against the back wall had been filled.

00:50:49Since I had last been in it the day before.

00:50:52With paper cranes.

00:50:53There were thousands of them.

00:50:54They hung from the ceiling on threads of clear nylon.

00:50:57In soft drifts.

00:50:58At different heights.

00:50:59In the pale yellow of winter narcissus.

00:51:01I stopped in the doorway.

00:51:03One thousand.

00:51:05Damien.

00:51:06One for every wish I have made for you since we were children.

00:51:09I kept count.

00:51:10He stepped into the room.

00:51:11He turned one of the cranes.

00:51:13Gently.

00:51:13On its thread.

00:51:14I started after the year your mother died.

00:51:16I did not know what to do with the things I wanted for you.

00:51:17I started folding.

00:51:18I folded one a week for the first year.

00:51:20Two a week for the next.

00:51:21Sometime around my underground years I lost track.

00:51:23I counted them last month.

00:51:25There were 947.

00:51:27I folded the last 53 in the apartment downstairs while you were upstairs sleeping.

00:51:32I crossed the room.

00:51:32I touched one of the cranes.

00:51:34The paper was thin and cool.

00:51:36The crease was perfect.

00:51:37I knew the fold.

00:51:39It was the same fold I had used at nine.

00:51:41He had been folding cranes for me.

00:51:43Alone.

00:51:43In his apartment.

00:51:44For a long time.

00:51:46Damien.

00:51:47Hmm.

00:51:48What were the wishes?

00:51:49He looked at me.

00:51:50That you would grow up happy.

00:51:51That you would grow up loved.

00:51:53That you would grow up to do the work you wanted.

00:51:55That you would eventually be able to come home and rest.

00:51:59That you would eventually see me.

00:52:02That is the only wish I never finished folding.

00:52:04He reached up and unhooked a single crane from a thread above his head.

00:52:08He held it out to me.

00:52:09I would like you to fold the last one.

00:52:11I took the crane.

00:52:12It was a half fold.

00:52:13The paper waiting.

00:52:14The crease set.

00:52:15Damien.

00:52:16When you are ready.

00:52:19I am ready.

00:52:20I folded the last crane.

00:52:21The wish I folded inside it was that I had not taken so long to see him.

00:52:25I hung it on the empty thread.

00:52:27He held me.

00:52:28In the doorway of the library.

00:52:29For a long time.

00:52:33I kissed him that night.

00:52:35Not the careful kiss on the couch he had given me weeks ago.

00:52:38Not a kiss I was allowing him to give me.

00:52:40A kiss I gave him.

00:52:41I crossed the library after dinner.

00:52:43He was at the piano.

00:52:44Playing the eight notes my mother used to hum.

00:52:46He did not see me coming.

00:52:48I sat down next to him on the bench.

00:52:50I waited for him to finish the phrase.

00:52:52I tilted his face toward mine with two fingers under his chin.

00:52:55I kissed him.

00:52:56He went very still.

00:52:57For a heartbeat.

00:52:58He did not respond.

00:53:00Then he made a small sound not a word.

00:53:02Something quieter.

00:53:03A sound I had never heard him make in all the time I had known him and his hand came

00:53:07up to cut the back of my neck and the bench creaked because he had moved without

00:53:10thinking.

00:53:11He kissed me back the way a man kisses a person he has been kissing in his head every night

00:53:15for a long time.

00:53:16When he pulled back, both his hands were on my face.

00:53:19His breath was not steady.

00:53:21His eyes had gone very dark.

00:53:22Sloan.

00:53:24Damien.

00:53:25I would like to say something.

00:53:27Say it.

00:53:29I have loved you for a very long time.

00:53:32I have loved you across continents and three engagements I refused and seven years of a man

00:53:36who was not me.

00:53:37I have loved you while you cried about other men in my passenger seat.

00:53:39I have loved you while you wrote thank you notes addressed to him on stationery I paid

00:53:42for.

00:53:43I have loved you while you called me at midnight to ask which dress you should wear to his

00:53:46department dinner.

00:53:47I have loved you in every shape a man can love a woman and still hide it.

00:53:51I am not going to hide any of it from this minute forward.

00:53:56Damien.

00:53:59I love you.

00:54:00His hands tightened on my face.

00:54:03Say it again.

00:54:04I love you.

00:54:06Again.

00:54:07I love you Damien.

00:54:08He pressed his forehead to mine.

00:54:10For a long moment he did not move.

00:54:11He simply breathed.

00:54:13Then he picked me up off the bench carefully, with respect to the wound and walked me out of

00:54:17the library, past the wall of Narcissus, into the foyer.

00:54:21He did not put me down at the elevator.

00:54:23He carried me into the bedroom.

00:54:25He set me, slowly, on the edge of the bed.

00:54:27He knelt on the floor in front of me.

00:54:29He took both my hands.

00:54:30I am not going to do anything tonight that I will not still be doing the night I die.

00:54:34He looked up at me.

00:54:35But I would like, tonight, to ask you one thing.

00:54:38Marry me.

00:54:39The cranes, in the library down the hall, turned slowly on their threads in the draft from

00:54:44the open window.

00:54:46Yes.

00:54:49Damien, yes.

00:54:50He did not let me go to Alaska alone.

00:54:52We had agreed, weeks earlier, that he would not come.

00:54:55He had said it himself in the kitchen that the right answer for my career was yes and

00:54:59the right answer for his heart was no, and that he would not be the one who decided which

00:55:03side of the snow line I slept on.

00:55:05He had meant it.

00:55:06He had also, the same night he meant it, started building a contingency.

00:55:10I found out about the contingency on the morning of April, 2nd.

00:55:14He came into the breakfast room with a folder under his arm and set it down next to my coffee.

00:55:18Sloney.

00:55:21Crane Industries has launched a polar research division.

00:55:25When?

00:55:28Last week.

00:55:31Damien.

00:55:32The division is headquarters out of Anchorage.

00:55:34It is funding three independent scientific teams across the Rongel and St. Elia ranges.

00:55:39The director of the division is a 58-year-old former Nenoway scientist whose hire I personally

00:55:43approved at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

00:55:45The director reports to a vice president of strategic operations.

00:55:49Damien.

00:55:49The vice president of strategic operations will be working out of a forward base camp in

00:55:53the Ringlish range from April 15th through the close of the field season.

00:55:56Damien.

00:55:57The vice president of strategic operations, me.

00:55:59I closed the folder.

00:56:01You are not coming with me to the field as my boyfriend.

00:56:03I am not coming with you to the field as your boyfriend.

00:56:06You are coming with me to the field as the vice president of a polar research resension

00:56:10you invented in the last three weeks.

00:56:13With cover that will hold up to any audit.

00:56:16Damien.

00:56:17I will sleep in a separate module.

00:56:18I will not interfere with your team.

00:56:20I will not be on your your radio frequency.

00:56:22I will, however, be 300 yards away every night you are in the field.

00:56:25You did not have to do this.

00:56:27I had to do this.

00:56:30Why?

00:56:30He sat down across from me.

00:56:32He took my left hand.

00:56:34He looked at the signet ring he had slid onto it the night of the surgery and never asked back.

00:56:38Because the last time you went to that mountain without me, you came home with a hole in your chest.

00:56:43I am not living through that twice.

00:56:45I can take care of myself.

00:56:46I know you can.

00:56:48I am asking, please, for the rest of my life to never have to find out again.

00:56:53I looked at him for a long moment.

00:56:54I had spent seven years asking a man to follow me to airports.

00:56:57I now had a man who would follow me to ice.

00:57:00All right.

00:57:01He brought my hand to his mouth.

00:57:05We landed in Anchorage on April 15th.

00:57:08He had flown commercial three days ahead of me to maintain the cover.

00:57:12He met me at the airport in a Crane Industries parka with a name tag that said D.

00:57:16Crane, VP Strategic Ops and the face so neutral that even I almost believed it.

00:57:21He shook my hand at the gate.

00:57:22He did not kiss me.

00:57:23He carried my carry-on to the SUV.

00:57:26In the SUV, with the doors closed and the windows tinted, he took my face in both hands and kissed

00:57:31me as if he had not seen me in a year.

00:57:32Three days was too long.

00:57:36Damien.

00:57:36I am revising the cover.

00:57:38I will be sleeping in your module.

00:57:41That defeats the cover.

00:57:42I do not care.

00:57:45Damien.

00:57:46Three days, Sloane.

00:57:47He kissed me again.

00:57:48The cover, for the record, held.

00:57:51The cold weather medic worked it out the first night.

00:57:53Finn worked it out the second.

00:57:55Briggs, who had transported me out of the equipment crate at Wrangell in February, worked it out before we even

00:58:01landed.

00:58:01Nobody said anything.

00:58:03Nobody had to.

00:58:04Damien did not hide that he watched me work.

00:58:06Damien did not hide that he ate every meal next to me.

00:58:09Damien did not hide that when I came back from the day's transects with snow in my hair.

00:58:13He met me at the door of the heated module with a towel he had warmed by the stove.

00:58:16The team, by week two, simply absorbed him.

00:58:20Finn said it best.

00:58:21Late one night in the operations module, after Damien had stepped out to take a call.

00:58:25Sloane.

00:58:26Hmm?

00:58:27I have seen a lot of men love a lot of women.

00:58:29I have never seen one love a woman like that.

00:58:32Like what?

00:58:33Like you are the only currency he has ever wanted.

00:58:36I did not have an answer for that.

00:58:38Finn went back to his clipboard.

00:58:39Damien came back in.

00:58:40He sat down next to me.

00:58:42He set a fresh cup of tea at my elbow without asking.

00:58:45He glanced at the medical chart on my clipboard, frowned slightly at one number on it, and said,

00:58:49Pulse is up.

00:58:50I just walked in from the field.

00:58:52That is not field walk pulse.

00:58:55Damien.

00:58:55I would like the medic to look at you tonight.

00:58:57The medic looked at me that night.

00:58:59The pulse was, as it turned out, fine.

00:59:02Damien did not apologize for asking.

00:59:04In the third week, I learned about the foundations.

00:59:07I learned about them by accident.

00:59:09The way I had learned about the wall of Narcissus, and the box of cranes, and the bound copies of

00:59:13every paper I had ever published.

00:59:15He did not volunteer.

00:59:16The information, I found it by following a thread.

00:59:20The thread was a small thank you note from a graduate student in Cape Town that arrived at base camp

00:59:24by satellite mail.

00:59:25The student had received a stipend from the Polar Atlas Foundation to attend a conference where I had given a

00:59:31keynote four years earlier.

00:59:32The note was effusive.

00:59:33It thanked me for the body of work and the foundation for the stipend.

00:59:37I had never heard of the Polar Atlas Foundation.

00:59:39I looked it up.

00:59:40Polar Atlas Foundation had given approximately $800,000 over the past nine years in small individual stipends to graduate students

00:59:48in glaciology, climate science, and polar geophysics.

00:59:52The recipient list was a precise map of every young researcher whose work had any tangential connection to mine.

00:59:57The foundation's board was three people.

01:00:00None of them I had heard of.

01:00:01I traced the LLC behind the foundation through three jurisdictions.

01:00:04It was Damien's.

01:00:05I traced four other foundations through the same pattern.

01:00:09Northern Light Trust, Ice and Salt Initiative.

01:00:11The 1,962 Foundation.

01:00:15Named, I realized, for the year of the lock at the Lake House.

01:00:19The Whitfield Adjacent Fellowship.

01:00:21Together, they had quietly dispersed about $11 million to young scientists in fields adjacent to mine.

01:00:27I confronted him about it that night in our module.

01:00:29He did not deny it.

01:00:31Damien.

01:00:32I funded your students.

01:00:35I do not have students.

01:00:37You will.

01:00:39I funded the field you were going to lead.

01:00:45Damien.

01:00:46He took my hand.

01:00:47I have been preparing the ground, Sloan.

01:00:49For a long time.

01:00:50I built the foundation network the same way I built the apartment and the wall.

01:00:54Not for you to notice.

01:00:55For you to land in.

01:00:56When you are ready.

01:00:57When you announce your own laboratory next year and you will,

01:00:59every promising postdoc in the discipline will already have a personal reason to apply to you.

01:01:03I did not stack the dare because I did not trust you to win without it.

01:01:06I stacked it because I would rather you not have to fight for what should have been handed to you

01:01:10seven years ago.

01:01:10Damien.

01:01:11Yes.

01:01:12There is no part of my life you have not been holding up from underneath.

01:01:16There is no part of you, Sloan.

01:01:19In the fourth week, he showed me Reagan's file.

01:01:22He had not brought it up since we landed.

01:01:24He brought it up only because, that morning, an emergency message had come through the satellite system.

01:01:30A tabloid in New York had published a photograph of me being carried, by Damien, off the medevac in February.

01:01:36The photograph had been bought from a freelancer who had snuck onto the helipad.

01:01:40The caption beneath the photo was a quote attributed, anonymously, to a close friend of Reagan Snow,

01:01:46suggesting that I had been romantically pursuing Damien Crane during my seven-year relationship with Preston.

01:01:51Damien read it to me at breakfast.

01:01:53He did not raise his voice.

01:01:55He set down the satellite tablet.

01:01:56He picked up his coffee.

01:01:58He took a slow sip.

01:02:01Sklone.

01:02:03Damien.

01:02:03I am withdrawing my offer to leave her alone.

01:02:06Damien.

01:02:07She violated the no contact clause when she planted the quote.

01:02:10That is now her problem, not mine.

01:02:11The deferred prosecution agreement is forfeit.

01:02:14She will be charged with the underlying fraud on Monday.

01:02:16The federal investigation into her undergraduate funding will be opened on Tuesday.

01:02:20I would like to do one additional thing.

01:02:22He looked at me.

01:02:23I would like to release the recording.

01:02:25The full one.

01:02:26The recording Reagan's midnight phone call from the Wrangell command tent had been used in the ethics hearing,

01:02:31and in Preston's case, but the full audio had never been made public.

01:02:34The two-minute clip the press had covered had only contained the part about the journal.

01:02:38The remaining 90 seconds contained the part where she had called me stupid for thinking money could buy a man.

01:02:43The part where she had described, in detail, the strategy of waiting for me to humiliate myself into walking away.

01:02:50The part where she had laughed.

01:02:52Release it.

01:02:53He did not blink.

01:02:54All of it?

01:02:55All of it.

01:02:56To the same outlet that ran the tabloid quote?

01:02:59To the same outlet.

01:03:00He took out his satellite phone.

01:03:02He made one call.

01:03:03The call lasted four minutes.

01:03:05By dinner, the recording was up.

01:03:07By midnight, it had been picked up by every major outlet that had covered the original audit.

01:03:12By the next morning, the tabloid that had run the quote had retracted it.

01:03:15By the end of the week, the publishing house that had originally pulled Reagan's book deal had publicly announced that

01:03:21it had also voided her advance contract for any future work.

01:03:24Reagan's snow did not surface in public again.

01:03:26Damien did not say anything about it.

01:03:29He did not have to.

01:03:30He had told me, weeks ago, that there had never been a moment in our entire acquaintance when I was

01:03:35unprotected.

01:03:36I was beginning, finally, to understand exactly what that had meant.

01:03:40I drilled Whitfield 1 the same day the recording went live.

01:03:43We had not planned the timing.

01:03:45The team had simply gotten to the site in the rotation.

01:03:47And the weather had cooperated.

01:03:49And Briggs had said, that morning, today is your day.

01:03:52Damien insisted on coming.

01:03:54He had not pressed to be on any other field site with me.

01:03:57He had stayed within his cover.

01:03:58He had let me work without his shadow on my shoulder.

01:04:01On the morning of Whitfield 1, he did not ask permission.

01:04:04He came.

01:04:05He carried the equipment up the ridge himself.

01:04:07Even though Briggs had two team members ready to do it.

01:04:10He stood 10 feet away while I drilled.

01:04:12He did not speak.

01:04:13I drilled.

01:04:14I logged the call.

01:04:15I labeled it.

01:04:16I stood up.

01:04:16I turned to look at him.

01:04:18He was watching me the way he had watched me come off the medevac at Teterboro a year before.

01:04:22Not breathing.

01:04:23Not blinking.

01:04:24Counting.

01:04:25With his thumb pressed unconsciously to the inside of his own wrist.

01:04:28Where he had once pressed it to mine.

01:04:30Damien.

01:04:32Hmm?

01:04:32I am alright.

01:04:34I know.

01:04:37This is the spot.

01:04:39I know.

01:04:40This is where I called you.

01:04:42This is where you called me.

01:04:43He took a step closer.

01:04:45He looked down at the snow.

01:04:46He looked at the small rise where the equipment crate had been.

01:04:48He looked at the lee of the outcrop where the walls had moved through.

01:04:51Then he knelt.

01:04:52He did not cry.

01:04:53He pressed his palm flat to the snow.

01:04:54The way a person might press a palm to a grave.

01:04:57He stayed there for a long moment.

01:04:58When he stood.

01:04:59His glove was wet through.

01:05:00He took my hand.

01:05:02I would like to ask you something.

01:05:03Ask.

01:05:04I would like to ask you to come back to this spot.

01:05:06Every year with me.

01:05:07On the anniversary.

01:05:08For the rest of our lives.

01:05:09Not because it was the worst day.

01:05:11Because it was the day you called me.

01:05:13That is the day I want to keep.

01:05:14I closed my hand around his.

01:05:16Every year.

01:05:18Every year.

01:05:19All right.

01:05:20Briggs.

01:05:2020 feet away.

01:05:21Very politely.

01:05:22Turned his back to give us privacy.

01:05:24We stayed at Whitfield 1 for 10 more minutes.

01:05:26When we walked back down the ridge.

01:05:28Damien did not let go of my hand.

01:05:30Briggs did not say anything about that.

01:05:32Either.

01:05:32We came home on May 28th.

01:05:34He had said.

01:05:35The night before we landed.

01:05:37That he wanted to be the one who drove me back from the airport.

01:05:40He had said it the way he said most things now calmly.

01:05:42With the assumption that I would not object.

01:05:44I did not object.

01:05:45He drove me back from Teterboro at 6 a.m.

01:05:49On a Tuesday in late spring.

01:05:50The apartment.

01:05:51When we walked into the foyer.

01:05:53Had changed.

01:05:53The wall of cause the one he had commissioned for me in March was the same.

01:05:57The wall of Narcissus.

01:05:58Opposite.

01:05:59Was the same.

01:06:00The piano was the same.

01:06:01The library.

01:06:02Three rooms down.

01:06:03Was the same.

01:06:04The bedroom had changed.

01:06:06He had moved his things in.

01:06:07His shoes by the door.

01:06:08His charcoal pullover folded over the back of the reading chair.

01:06:11His book on the bedside table on what had become.

01:06:14In the last two months.

01:06:15His side.

01:06:16Sloan.

01:06:18Damien.

01:06:18I am not asking permission.

01:06:20I am not asking you to.

01:06:21He smiled.

01:06:22It was the first full.

01:06:24Unmanaged smile I had ever seen on his face.

01:06:26He set my carry-on down by the door.

01:06:28He picked me up.

01:06:29I have had a small panic.

01:06:31Every day.

01:06:31For six weeks.

01:06:32That you would change your mind on the plane.

01:06:34I did not change my mind.

01:06:35I know that now.

01:06:37Damien.

01:06:37Hmm.

01:06:38Put me down.

01:06:39No.

01:06:39I can walk.

01:06:41I know.

01:06:42He carried me through the foyer.

01:06:43Past the wall of cause.

01:06:44Into the bedroom.

01:06:45He set me.

01:06:46Very carefully.

01:06:47On the edge of the bed.

01:06:48He knelt in front of me.

01:06:50He took both my hands.

01:06:51He looked up at me for a long moment.

01:06:53I would like to ask you the question I told you I was going to ask you in the winter.

01:06:57Damien.

01:06:58It is May.

01:06:59I cannot wait until the winter.

01:07:00It's May.

01:07:02Sloan.

01:07:02He reached into his pocket.

01:07:04He took out a small velvet box.

01:07:06He did not place it on the piano this time.

01:07:08He opened it.

01:07:09Inside.

01:07:10On a small bed of pale cream silk.

01:07:12Was a ring.

01:07:13It was not the kind of ring I would have expected.

01:07:15Not from him.

01:07:16Not from a man who could have walked into any jeweler in Manhattan and chosen any stone in

01:07:20the city.

01:07:21It was a small, deliberate band of brushed gold.

01:07:24Set into it.

01:07:25Almost flush.

01:07:26Was a single pale yellow sapphire.

01:07:28The color of winter narcissus.

01:07:30I knew the stone.

01:07:31I knew the stone.

01:07:32Because it had been in my mother's locket.

01:07:34The locket she had worn the day she died.

01:07:36The locket my father had been keeping in a velvet bag in a drawer in his desk for 18

01:07:40years.

01:07:41Damien.

01:07:42I asked your father six months ago.

01:07:45Damien.

01:07:46He gave it to me with both hands.

01:07:48Damien.

01:07:49Sloanie Whitfield.

01:07:51Damien.

01:07:52I will say it twice if I have to.

01:07:55Say it.

01:07:57I have loved you for a very long time.

01:08:00I built a life with one room in it.

01:08:02The room had no furniture and no light and one chair facing the door.

01:08:06I sat in the chair year after year.

01:08:08I sat in it through three engagements I refused.

01:08:10I sat in it through your seven years with another man.

01:08:13I sat in it through the night your mother died and the night you graduated and the night

01:08:16I painted the wall.

01:08:18I sat in it on the afternoon you called me from a mountain in Alaska.

01:08:22I have not been in that room since the day I picked you up off the floor of that tent.

01:08:26The room is gone now Sloane.

01:08:28The whole house is yours.

01:08:30Marry me.

01:08:31I had thought for months that when this moment came I would say something simple.

01:08:36I had thought I would say yes.

01:08:38I had thought I would say yes because the word was small and complete and did not need

01:08:42any of the surrounding architecture.

01:08:44Instead I sat on the edge of his bed in his apartment in front of the wall of cause he

01:08:48had commissioned for me holding my mother's yellow sapphire on its brushed gold band and

01:08:52I started to cry.

01:08:53I had not cried since the helicopter.

01:08:55I cried now.

01:08:57He did not move.

01:08:58He did not say a word.

01:08:59He let me cry.

01:09:00After a long time I said it.

01:09:04Yes.

01:09:04He closed his eyes once he opened them.

01:09:06Say it again.

01:09:08Yes.

01:09:10Again?

01:09:12Yes Damien yes.

01:09:14He slid the ring onto my fourth finger above the signet he had given me.

01:09:18In the hospital.

01:09:19The brushed gold was warm.

01:09:20The yellow sapphire caught the morning light coming in off the east river.

01:09:23He stayed kneeling.

01:09:24He pressed his forehead to my knees.

01:09:26I bent forward.

01:09:27I rested my forehead against the crown of his head.

01:09:30We stayed like that.

01:09:31In the bedroom in his apartment.

01:09:33For a long time.

01:09:34After a while.

01:09:34He stood up.

01:09:35He picked me up off the edge of the bed.

01:09:37He did not.

01:09:38This time.

01:09:39Set me down anywhere.

01:09:40He carried me to the south windows.

01:09:42He stood there.

01:09:43Holding me.

01:09:44Looking out at the city.

01:09:45Mrs. Crane.

01:09:48Damien.

01:09:49I am rehearsing.

01:09:50Rehearse it once more.

01:09:53Mrs. Crane.

01:09:54Yes Damien.

01:09:55He smiled into my hair.

01:09:57He did not put me down for the rest of the morning.

01:09:59We were married in November.

01:10:01He gave me.

01:10:02In the months between.

01:10:03The kind of wedding that a man who has been planning a wedding in his head for a long time

01:10:07gives a woman who has been allowing herself to imagine one for ten weeks.

01:10:11Which is to say.

01:10:12A small wedding.

01:10:13I had thought he would want a large one.

01:10:14He could have filled every cathedral in Manhattan.

01:10:17He did not.

01:10:18He picked the lake house.

01:10:19He picked a Saturday in late November when the first snow was due.

01:10:23He picked the porch.

01:10:24He invited my father.

01:10:25Three of his cousins.

01:10:26Garcia.

01:10:27Briggs.

01:10:28Finn.

01:10:28My two graduate cohort co-investigators.

01:10:31The cold weather medic.

01:10:32The surgeon who had patched my lung.

01:10:34And the National Science Foundation chair.

01:10:36That was the entire guest list.

01:10:38His mother was not invited.

01:10:39She wrote him a letter the week before the wedding.

01:10:41He returned it unopened.

01:10:43He did not tell me he had returned it.

01:10:45Garcia mentioned it in passing on the morning of the wedding.

01:10:48The way she mentioned most logistical details.

01:10:51I asked him about it that afternoon in the bedroom while I was getting dressed.

01:10:55He buttoned his cuff.

01:10:56He did not look up.

01:10:57Damien.

01:10:58She asked two months ago if she could attend.

01:11:02And?

01:11:04I told her she would be welcome the day she apologized to you.

01:11:07She did not.

01:11:08She did not.

01:11:10Damien.

01:11:12Sloan.

01:11:14She is your mother.

01:11:15She had thirty years to be my mother.

01:11:17She used that time to try to take you from me.

01:11:19I am not paying her interest on a debt she did not service.

01:11:22He buttoned the second cuff.

01:11:23When she is ready to apologize to you she may come to dinner.

01:11:27Until then she may live with what she chose.

01:11:28I crossed the room.

01:11:30I straightened his tie.

01:11:31Slowly.

01:11:32With both hands.

01:11:33Damien.

01:11:34Hmm?

01:11:35I love you.

01:11:36He caught my hands at his collar.

01:11:38He kissed both wrists.

01:11:39One after the other.

01:11:40Mrs. Crane.

01:11:41Not yet.

01:11:42In forty-three minutes.

01:11:43Forty-three.

01:11:44I have been counting since six a.m.

01:11:46He kissed me on the forehead.

01:11:48He turned me toward the door.

01:11:49Your father is waiting downstairs.

01:11:51Alright.

01:11:51Sloan.

01:11:52Hmm?

01:11:53Walk slowly.

01:11:54Why?

01:11:54Because the next time you walk through a door toward me you are mine.

01:11:56I would like to remember every second of it.

01:11:59He cried at the ceremony.

01:12:00I had not expected him to.

01:12:01I had not thought it possible.

01:12:03He had been.

01:12:04For the entirety of the time I had known him.

01:12:06A man who had not visibly cried at a funeral.

01:12:09A wedding.

01:12:10A court ruling.

01:12:11Or a press conference.

01:12:12He had stood at his father's gravesite and not shed a tear.

01:12:15He cried on the porch of the lake house on a Saturday in November when he saw me come

01:12:19around the corner of the house in my mother's dress.

01:12:21My father saw it first.

01:12:23He squeezed my elbow.

01:12:24Look at him.

01:12:25I looked.

01:12:26Damien was standing at the end of the porch in front of the open front door.

01:12:30The brass lock.

01:12:31The lock that had held since the house was built was just behind him.

01:12:34His hands were clasped in front of him.

01:12:36His eyes were closed.

01:12:38Tears were moving.

01:12:39Slowly.

01:12:39Down his cheeks.

01:12:40He did not wipe them.

01:12:42He opened his eyes when I was three steps away.

01:12:44He smiled.

01:12:45It was the smile of a man who had been waiting a long time to use it.

01:12:48My father set my hand into his.

01:12:51Damien.

01:12:53Sir.

01:12:53She is yours.

01:12:55Sir.

01:12:56She always was.

01:12:57Dad smiled.

01:12:59He took his seat in the front row.

01:13:00The officiant.

01:13:01A friend of the family.

01:13:02Who had married my parents in the same spot long ago said a few words.

01:13:06He spoke about commitment.

01:13:07He spoke about the longevity of love that has been quietly held.

01:13:10He spoke.

01:13:11Briefly.

01:13:12About my mother.

01:13:13Who had taught him to make soda bread when he was a young man.

01:13:16Then he said.

01:13:17Damien.

01:13:17Your vows.

01:13:19Damien took both my hands.

01:13:20Sloan Whitfield.

01:13:21Damien Crane.

01:13:22I have loved you for a very long time.

01:13:24I kept a small notebook.

01:13:26The notebook had in it everything I learned about you that nobody else knew.

01:13:29The way you held your fork.

01:13:30The way you closed a door so it did not click.

01:13:32The way you ate the corners of a sandwich first.

01:13:34The way you bit your thumb before you took an exam.

01:13:37I do not need the notebook anymore.

01:13:38The porch was very quiet.

01:13:40He went on.

01:13:40I am keeping it for our daughter.

01:13:42I vow to love you with the precision and the patience of a man who has practiced.

01:13:46I vow to defend you the way I have always defended you which is publicly, immediately and without negotiation.

01:13:51I vow to bring you tea every morning and to play the piano for you every night.

01:13:54I vow to come home for dinner.

01:13:56Every night.

01:13:57For the rest of my life.

01:13:58I vow to never under any circumstances let you walk out of a room without telling you first that I

01:14:02love you.

01:14:03That is what I have for you Sloan.

01:14:04The rest is yours to ask for.

01:14:05I said my vows.

01:14:06I do not remember them.

01:14:08I remember only that when the officiant said you may kiss the bride.

01:14:11Damien did not move quickly.

01:14:13He moved very slowly.

01:14:14He cupped my face the way he had cupped it the day he came up off the floor of the

01:14:18tent in Ringlaw.

01:14:19He kissed me.

01:14:20The first snow began.

01:14:21On cue.

01:14:22Behind him.

01:14:23We did not have a reception.

01:14:25We had dinner.

01:14:26Twelve of us.

01:14:27Around a long wooden table in the dining room of the lake house.

01:14:30With two of my cousins and my father and Garcia and Briggs and Finn and the medic and the surgeon

01:14:34and the

01:14:35National Science Foundation chair who had brought his wife.

01:14:38The food was simple.

01:14:39The wine was old.

01:14:40The conversation moved.

01:14:41The way conversations at lake houses move.

01:14:44In slow loops that did not need anywhere to go.

01:14:47After dinner.

01:14:47Damien played the piano.

01:14:49He played the eight notes my mother used to hum.

01:14:51He played the second eight notes he had written for me alone in his apartment.

01:14:55While I had been in Alaska drilling Whitfield One.

01:14:57He played a third set of eight notes I had never heard.

01:15:00He stopped after the third set.

01:15:02He turned to me.

01:15:02That one I wrote this morning.

01:15:05When this morning?

01:15:064am.

01:15:08Damien.

01:15:09I will write you a new eight notes every morning of our marriage.

01:15:13Damien.

01:15:15I have already started counting.

01:15:16Around midnight the guests went to bed in the guest rooms upstairs.

01:15:19Damien took my hand.

01:15:21He led me out the front door onto the porch and down the gravel drive to the boathouse at the

01:15:25edge of the lake.

01:15:26The boathouse was lit with a single lamp.

01:15:28He had had it cleaned.

01:15:29He had had a single chair placed inside it, by the window facing the water.

01:15:33He had hung and I almost laughed when I saw it every single one of the thousand cranes from the

01:15:38apartment library.

01:15:39They hung from the ceiling of the boathouse in soft drifts of pale yellow.

01:15:43And the lamp lit them from below.

01:15:45He stood with me in the doorway.

01:15:46Sloan.

01:15:48Damien.

01:15:49This is the last thing.

01:15:50The last thing.

01:15:50Every other thing I have done over all this time I have done quietly.

01:15:53I have folded a rain.

01:15:54I have painted a wall.

01:15:55I have learned a piece of music.

01:15:56I have bought a building.

01:15:57I have built a foundation network.

01:15:58I have refused a marriage.

01:16:00I did all of it quietly because you were not yet mine.

01:16:02This is the last thing I do quietly.

01:16:04He turned me to face him.

01:16:05From tomorrow I do everything loudly.

01:16:07I bring you flowers in front of every restaurant.

01:16:08I hold your hand at every board meeting.

01:16:10I introduce you at every event in this city as my wife for the rest of my life.

01:16:14Tell me you understand.

01:16:16I understand.

01:16:18Sloan.

01:16:19Welcome home.

01:16:20He cupped my face in both hands.

01:16:22He kissed me slowly.

01:16:24The way he had kissed me on the porch.

01:16:26And behind him, the thousand cranes turned slowly in the draft.

01:16:29I had spent seven years thinking my life was a story about being seen by the wrong man.

01:16:34It had been, all along, a story about being held up from underneath by the right one.

01:16:38The right one was holding me.

01:16:40Now, in a boathouse at the edge of a lake at midnight in November, in front of 1,000

01:16:44paper wishes he had folded for me before he was 30 years old.

01:16:48The wish I had folded into the last crane, months ago, had been that I had not taken

01:16:52so long to see him.

01:16:53The wish I made now, standing in the doorway, was that I would have a lifetime war.

01:16:58The end.

Abandoned on a Snow Mountain, I Became a Tycoon's Obsession - Full EPISODE

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended