He nodded. “I haven’t looked at a financial statement for a long time, but yes.”
She jammed her hands on her hips. “You’ve been living in a cave and doing odd jobs.”
“I can explain why. It was the only way.”
“You have one pair of broken shoes, and four hundred bottles of wine.”
He nodded. He should’ve figured on her disbelief.
She made finger quotes. “‘Billionaire drug company baron gives it all away to live in a cave.’ Is that the headline Nat would write? You don’t live in this house but you could. You don’t use the second storey and all that’s down here is the laundry, the garage, the foyer and the place where you keep four hundred bottles of wine.”
“The cellar.”
“Did you give all the furniture away?”
“Yes.”
“Your clothes?”
“Yes. I let the charities in to take what they wanted.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to pay. I still have to pay. No one else would.”
She came up the steps and took his face in her hands. He flinched. She shouldn’t want to touch him. It was impossible not to meet her eyes. He didn’t know how many more times he’d have that pleasure.
“What is it you’ve done, Drum?”
“That drug hurts people.”
“If they abuse it, sure. All drugs have to be taken with care.”
“No.” He put his hands over hers and drew them away from his face. It wasn’t that simple. Some people got sick. The drug made them crazy. They crashed cars, jumped off bridges and in front of trains, drank themselves into comas, some of them died. They died because of him, his cleverness, his celebrated acumen, his ambition, his greed. And when he saw it was evil, he tried to shut it all down, but the whole thing was too big, too many careers invested, too many investors, too much money. It was easy and lawful to hide behind warnings and usage guidelines, behind legal jargon and confidential compensation deals.
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean. Circa can affect people badly, lower their inhibitions, make them sleepwalk, make them hurt themselves or others. A lot of people who took it died and that’s my fault.”
“Are you saying the drug doesn’t help people?”
He stood, let her hands go. It helped more people than it hurt, but that wasn’t enough. “The loss is unacceptable.”
“But there are warnings like for most drugs, if people don’t—”
“The warnings aren’t enough.” Even when he’d had them changed, made more specific. It wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t he explaining this well enough for her to understand?
“Are you saying it’s a conspiracy?” Her voice dropped to a whisper as if the idea was too big to say aloud. But it was nothing so obviously sinister.
He pushed a hand through his hair. It was always hard to get people to understand this. “I’m saying no one should die because they’re having trouble sleeping.” It couldn’t be simpler than that.
“Okay, but you can’t market a drug that’s harmful. There must be checks and balances. Doesn’t the government have a say?”
“Yes, but it’s not enough. There’s too much money being made, too many careers. The system is corrupt.” It’s what the whole industry did. Professional lies, couched in variable truths and acceptable exceptions. Circa was no different. No worse, they’d said. It helped millions of people with severe insomnia. But no one was meant to go mad, no one was meant to die.
“Drum, you’re freaking me out.”
He’d put half the foyer between them. Foley looked small and scared and so tired, and she didn’t understand. She was like his father, like the board, she didn’t believe him. She couldn’t see how he’d failed again and again to take back control, to stop what he’d started, to shut it all down until they forced him out. His company. His board. His chairman, his own father. Discredited, damned, lost, so lost and so full of guilt and death he’d wanted to die too.
“You don’t believe me.”