The Fixer

One Year Later

Andrea wasn’t having any wine but wasn’t ready to tell people why.

Rick poured himself a plastic tumbler of wine from the box.

“I know it’s not up to your lofty standards, Rick,” she said.

He grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on wine jokes?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re still fair game.”

The party was crowded with Geometry Partners staff and donors and potential donors. The occasion was the opening of Geometry Partners’ new Somerville location, which was called the Leonard Hoffman House, underwritten by an anonymous gift of one million dollars. There were Geometry Partners posters on the wall (DO THE MATH; KNOW THE ANGLES; IT ALL ADDS UP).

Evan was buzzed on grape juice and cookies, and when he wasn’t playing Minecraft he was careening through the party, knocking into guests, and spilling drinks.

Thomas Sculley was in federal prison and would be for another ten years. Eight with good behavior. Alex Pappas was in prison as well but would be out much sooner. He’d struck a plea bargain with government prosecutors: an eighteen-month sentence in exchange for full cooperation. For spilling all. Rick wasn’t surprised that Pappas had made a good deal for himself.

But he didn’t particularly care. After the Thomas Sculley exposé was published and was picked up by forty news outlets, Rick found himself weighing several job offers, including one from a nonprofit public interest website that funded investigative journalism projects and another from TheWall Street Journal. Eventually he went with the investigative journalism website, which gave him the flexibility to do his pieces in Boston. His current project was an investigation into corruption in the process by which the FDA approved pharmaceuticals.

It felt peculiar becoming a father-a stepfather, actually-stepping into the role instead of being promoted to dadhood through the usual system. But at the same time it felt right.

The house on Clayton Street was too badly damaged to be salvageable. Rick split the insurance proceeds with Wendy. Between the cash left over, after the Geometry Partners grant, and his salary from the nonprofit, money wasn’t a problem.

The reporter from Back Bay magazine approached them, a young woman named Lindsay who looked twelve, wearing a bulky cable-knit sweater and heavy tortoiseshell glasses. “Is now a good time to do this interview?” she said.

“Sure,” said Andrea, “but maybe we should sit down a little later. There’s a lot to get into in terms of our success rate, measured along a bunch of different axes, and-”

“You know what?” Lindsay said. “I only have nine hundred words so I’m not really going to be drilling down so much. It’s kinda more of a lifestyle piece about one of Boston’s Power Couples.”

“Okay,” Andrea said.

“Awesome. So you guys just got married, right?”

Andrea showed her the wedding ring. They’d done the deed only a month earlier, at city hall.

“So how do you guys do it all? That’s what I want to know.” She turned to Rick. “Your article on Thomas Sculley just won the George Polk Award for investigative journalism, right? And then there was your piece about kickbacks in the defense industry.” Looking at Andrea, she said, “And you guys have a little kid and Geometry Partners has got to be more than a full-time job. Plus it’s expanding so fast, right, with locations in Washington, DC, and New York City? How do you do it? What’s the trick?”

Rick and Andrea exchanged glances.

“The trick is,” Rick said, “there’s no trick.”