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.
You don't get to sit in that chair and be worried about her. I'm not worried about her. Preston said, "I'm telling you what will happen. I know these people, Clare. They're my people.
I hired most of them. If that child's name goes in a filing, there will be a very good firm on it inside of 90 minutes. And they will go at her father, not her, him. They will find 11 false warranty claims on company paperwork and they will put it on a screen and they will say this is a man who lies on documents for sympathetic reasons and a jury will believe it because it's true. Claire's hand was on the door.
You want to protect that little girl. Preston Marsh said then don't hand her to me. I will use her. Not because I want to, because I'll be in a room where it's the only thing left on the table and I'll be 67 and I'll do it. At 5:03, Clareire Bennett said, "Then I won't put her in a filing."
Good. I'll do something worse. Do something. At 6:20 that evening, Marcus's front door opened and Clare Bennett walked into his house and Marcus Williams was standing in his own living room and he did not say hello. Where were you, Marcus?
Where were you, Claire? You know where I was. Say it. I went to Preston Marsh's office at 6:21. Marcus Williams said, "There was a man outside my sister's house.
Claire's bag hit the floor." "What? 4:00 parked watching my child in a yard." "Marcus, while you were in his daddy's office," Marcus said. There was a car outside my sister's house.
Claire had gone white to the lips. Is she? She's fine. She's with Renee. Rene's got a friend sitting in the driveway with a folding chair and a Louisville slugger, which I want you to picture because that's my life now.
Marcus, I didn't know. I know you didn't know. And it came out of him at last. All of it. All 40 hours of it.
And it took the whole room. That's the problem, Claire. You don't know. You have never once known. You didn't know what it looked like when you knocked on my door.
You didn't know what it looked like when you talked to that cop in my driveway. You didn't know he had a father. You didn't know he had 11 women before you. And you turned your phone off. I turned it off so I wouldn't.
You turned your phone off, Marcus said. And I called you four times and it went straight to voicemail and I sat in a hot truck and I thought that's how it happens. That's exactly how it happens. Somebody's fine and then a phone's off. At 6:24, Clareire Bennett said, "I turned it off so I wouldn't call you and ask permission."
Marcus stopped. "Say that again. Say that. I turned it off so I wouldn't call you." Clare said, "Because I knew that if I heard your voice, I'd ask you if I should go and you'd have said no."
And I'd have said, "Okay." And Marcus, I have spent four years asking a man if I was sure. And I got in the elevator and I thought if I ask this one and he says no and I stop then I never actually got out. I just changed who's holding it. The room went very quiet.
That's not fair to you. She said you'd have said no for good reasons. He said no for bad ones. It doesn't matter. It's still me standing in a hallway waiting to be told.
At 6:27 Marcus Williams sat down. Claire, he said, that's the best reason anybody's ever given me for the worst thing anybody's ever done to me. I know. Don't ever do it again. I won't.
That's four, Marcus said. And Clare Bennett laughed. And then she was crying and she sat down on the floor with her back against the door and said, "He offered me $500,000." At 6:29, Marcus said, "Say that again." 11 women, Marcus, I'm the 12th.
He's been paying them off since Ethan was 19. He said everything in your folder is legal. And he was right. And he said the only thing I can't survive is the little girl. And he was right about that, too.
Clare. And then he told me not to put her in it. Clare said, "And Marcus, that's the part. That's the part I drove 40 minutes with. He told me not to put her in it because he would use her."