Seven years. Fifty-something round trips. And she has never once asked Grady for anything and never once told me, because — and she said this in the car park, flatly, like a woman reading out a delivery time —
"It wasn't mine to tell you. And I wasn't going to be the ex-girlfriend who rings the fiancée."
Which I have thought about a lot, because she is right, and because it also meant that a woman I had spent four years being quietly cold about was the only adult in the whole arrangement.
I sent her flowers after the funeral and she sent me a message saying please don't.
We speak about three times a year.
And my father, who is the reason any of this was mine to lose.
Ellis Marlowe ran that company for twenty-six years and he gave Grady Foyle delegated signing authority in the January of 2021, which is the door everything else walked through.
