You are number 12. The number is usually somewhere between 200 and 400, and you're smarter than the last four, so I'd start you at five. $500,000. Yes. At 3:46, Clareire Bennett said, "You knew." "Of course I knew.

You've always known, Clare." Preston Marsh folded his hands. "I have known since he was 19 years old. Do you think I like it? I don't like it.

I lie awake. My wife left over it. But he's my son, and I'm 67 years old, and there is not one thing on this earth I can do about what he is. So, I do the only thing I can do, which is make sure that every single woman he ruins walks away with more than she came in with. That's not It is though, he said.

It's exactly what it is. I'm not the villain in this, Clare. I'm the cleanup. At 3:49, Clare said, "I'm not taking your money. You will.

I have the plan set. I know you do. I have the June call where a man said the assessments do the work." Ben Harrove Preston Marsh said he's an idiot. He's been an idiot for 9 years and I keep him because he's good with the county.

He smiled. Claire, I'll say this once so you don't waste the weekend on it. Everything in that folder is legal. Every piece. You could put it on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning and by Monday afternoon 300 people would call this office wanting to invest.

Claire's hands went white on the folder. "So, what stops you?" she said. "Nothing stops me." "Then why are you offering me $500,000?"

At 352, Preston Marsh stopped smiling. "Because of the little girl," he said. Clare went cold all the way down. "There it is," Preston said quietly. "You see, you're smart.

Everything else is legal, Clare. Every last piece of it." but a grown man in a backyard on a ladder asking an 8-year-old child where her aunt lives. He let it sit. That's not legal, he said.

That's not a civil matter. That's not tax assessments and phasing plans. That's a photograph on a news broadcast and my son's face under it. And Clare, I can survive anything in that folder in your lap. I cannot survive that child.

At 3:55, Clareire Bennett understood 11 months late that she had never once in her life been the leverage. So Preston Marsh said and opened a drawer and set a checkbook on the desk. Let's talk about what it cost to make sure that little girl never has to say a word. And at 3:56 in the afternoon, 45 mi of Atlanta traffic away, Marcus Williams's phone rang, and it was a number he didn't know. and he answered it and a woman's voice he had never heard said, "Mr. Williams, this is Rene's neighbor."

"Honey, I don't want you to panic, but there's a man parked outside your sister's house." Marcus Williams did not panic. That was the strangest part, and he knew it even while it was happening. Something in him went quiet and level the way it had gone at 6:15 on a July morning 3 years ago when a hospice nurse said, "It's today." and he heard himself say in a voice that belonged to somebody calmer than he was.

Ma'am, what's your name? Deborah. I'm two doors up from Renee. Deborah, is my daughter in the yard? She's in the yard.

Baby, she's fine. She's got the hose. Is the man out of the car? He's not out of the car. Deborah, listen to me.

Marcus was already moving. Go stand in Rene's yard. Honey, I don't want to. I know you don't. Go stand in the yard where he can see you and take your phone and hold it up like you're taking a picture of the sky and do not point it at him.

Marcus, just hold it up. Marcus said, "That's all. He'll leave." At 3:59, Deborah Coats, 62 years old, walked out into her neighbor's yard in house shoes and held her phone up at the sky. At 4:01, the car pulled off the curb.

At 4:02, Renee called him screaming. At 4:24, Marcus was indicator and his daughter was on his hip and he was standing in his sister's kitchen with his heart going like a hammer in a can. And Renee was saying the same four words over and over. I didn't see him. Marcus, I didn't see him.

I was inside and I didn't see him. Renee, I was inside making a sandwich. Renee, look at me. She was 10 ft from the street. Renee.

Marcus put his free hand on his sister's shoulder. You didn't do anything wrong. And Renee Williams, who had never in 38 years let her little brother comfort her about anything, put her face in her hands and said, "That's what everybody said to you about Nikki, and you never believed it either." At 4:31, Lily said into her father's shoulder, "Daddy, you're squeezing." He put her down. baby.

Was it the man? I don't know. Was it a real don't know or a daddy don't know? At 4:32, Marcus Williams crouched down and said, "It's a real don't know." And Lily nodded like a woman signing for a package.

And something in Marcus's chest went through the floor because he understood that he had just gotten one back. One out of however many he was going to spend. At 4:40, he called Claire. Voicemail. At 4:41, he called again.

Voicemail. At 44, he sat down on his sister's front steps and put his elbows on his knees and said out loud to nobody, "Claire, what did you do?" At 4:47, Preston Marsh's pen was still uncapped, "You've been quiet 9 minutes," he said. "I'm thinking. That's a long time to think about $500,000.

It's not a long time to think about a child, Clare said. Preston Marsh set the pen down. Say the number, he said. I'll write it. Six 7.

Claire, I've got a man in Buckhead whose daughter cost me 1.1 and she calls me at Christmas. At 4:49, Clare Bennett said she calls you at Christmas. She does. Do you hear that? I hear a woman who took a settlement and got on with her life, Preston said.

Which is more than I can say for you at the moment. Mr. Marsh. Clare leaned forward. You said you're the cleanup.

I did 11 times. 12 with you. 11 women. Clare said 11 women got checks and every single one of them signed something, didn't they? And every single one of them can never say a word.

And so the 12th one walks in 11 months later and finds out she's the 12th one on the day she gets here. Preston Marsh said nothing. You didn't clean up anything. Clare said you built him. Every time you wrote a check, you bought him another one.

He's 41 years old and he has never once in his life met a consequence because his daddy gets there first with a checkbook. and you have the nerve to sit in this chair and tell me your wife left you over it like you're the one who's been through something. At 452, Preston Marsh's face did something Clare had never seen it do. It went old. "Yes," he said. "What?"

"Yes," he said again. "That's right. That's exactly right. And you're the first one who ever said it in this room, and I have been waiting 11 years for somebody to say it in this room." Claire's hands went still on the folder.

Then say no, she said. What? Say no to him. One time. Say, Ethan, I'm not paying.

Say, Ethan, you're on your own. I can't. You can, Clare. I can't, Preston Marsh said. And for one second, the whole 11th floor of that building was just a 67year-old man in a chair.

Do you understand what that would be? Do you understand what it would be to be the man who did that to his own son? I'd have to live in it every day for however many years I've got left. At 455, Clare Bennett stood up. You'd have to live in it, she said.

That's the sentence. That's the actual sentence right there. You won't do it because you'd have to live in it. Claire, 11 women live in it, she said. 12.

An 81-year-old woman on Delano Street lives in it. A man who fixes air conditioners for free lives in it. There's a little girl in Decator who is going to live in it for the rest of her life because a nice man waved at her over a fence. Clare sit down. No, Clare.

If you walk out that door, I cannot help you. At 457, Clare said, "I'm not asking you to help me." "Then what are you doing here?" And Clare Bennett said, "I came to find out if you knew." Preston Marsh stared at her.

"That's it," she said. "That's the whole reason, not the money, not the folder, not the project. I came here to find out whether the man who signs my checks knew what his son does." Because for 11 months, I've been lying awake asking myself if I'm crazy, and if you'd looked me in the face and said, "I had no idea I'd have gone home and I'd have believed I was crazy for the rest of my life." She picked up her bag.

You said, "Of course I knew." She said, "You said it in 4 seconds. You didn't even have to think." Claire, thank you. Clare said, "That's the first honest thing anybody said to me since March."

At 4:59, she was at the door. "Claire," she stopped. "Don't put the child in it," Preston Marsh said. At 5:00, Clare Bennett turned around and said, "You don't get to say that. I'm saying it anyway.