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inherited a hundred million dollars when she turned thirty.
    “He’s under a pretty tough prenup, so this is his own money, but I don’t deny what you’re saying. But still, I can’t ask him to carry the whole load. I have twice as many shares as he does. Besides, I just can’t let what’s left of my team go without killing any hope of even the Chinese wanting us, let alone anyone topping them. That’s what this is all about.” He sounded more frightened than convinced.
    Three hundred thousand dollars would buy Kate and Peter a good deal of time with their banks. Kate was determined to hold onto their home even if it meant exhausting both her savings and her pension. It wasn’t only for Mack’s sake. She and her mother moved twice after her father died, each time to a smaller and meaner place. Kate slept on the sofa from the time she was fourteen until she left for Penn on a scholarship. She clawed her way out of that life. She would not subject Sarah and Mack to anything remotely close to that.
    “I’ve been working through a worst-case budget. Until Sarah came home tonight I was this close to pulling Sarah’s cello lessons out of it because it’s a thousand a month we need just to get by and you’re asking me to let three hundred thousand slip out of our hands like it was water. Tell me how I get comfortable with that idea.” It was a rhetorical question for which Kate expected no answer. “And Mack.”
    Peter cut her off in mid-sentence. Peter’s voice showed how close Kate’s question had come to hitting a vital organ. “Didn’t you say we shouldn’t use the children as buffers? I know what I’m asking. I’ll always be able to get a job if Ascalon collapses entirely. I’ll stand on street corners with a squeegee and clean windshields for quarters if that’s what you want. I’ll sell one of my kidneys if I have to. Sarah will have her lessons as long as she wants them. Is that good enough for you, or do you want something in writing? I wish to God I could say the same thing about the house, but this money won’t be the difference whether we stay or go. The only way we can hold onto everything we have is if you get the top job at Drake and the money that comes with it. You know that as well as I do.” Kate took a step away from Peter as he continued talking. “Jesus, Kate, I feel as though we’re going through a divorce here, but I’m not the one leaving. Show some faith in me. That’s all I’m asking. I need to know you still believe in me.”
    Kate stopped walking. She kissed Peter and then put her hand on his cheek. “You’re right.” And then she added, “My God, how much has changed since we bought the Leger.”
    Peter whispered, “Don’t talk in the past tense, Kate. Whatever you do, don’t remind me of what we lost. I’ve let go of seventy-five percent of my people and I just can’t pull the plug on everyone else yet. Don’t ask me to do that. I’ll make good on the money. Please, Kate. Just this once.”
    If she said no, the only thing Peter would hear was that Kate no longer believed in him. The effort to work through the residue of that message would be far greater than the task of having to climb over another three hundred thousand dollars as she worked her way out of the hole they were in.
    “One condition, Peter. Promise me you’ll pay our bills with the rest of the loan. It’s important I hear that from you.”

THIRTEEN
    A telephone call of introduction, an email saying only that she needed to trace the provenance of a painting that may have been sold by the gallery, and Kate had received an invitation to visit the Galerie Marc just off the Marketplatz in the old town of Basel in two days’ time. She stopped for a minute at the town hall, a red stucco piece of art in itself, hundreds of years old and decorated with medieval figures and a great wooden clock.
    The façade of the two-story building housing the gallery once might have been bright yellow, but now