Silver Girl

On July 1, Meredith Martin Delinn flees New York City in the dead of night. Her husband, Freddy Delinn, has just been sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for running a massive Ponzi scheme, and federal marshals are seizing the couple's Park Avenue penthouse. Meredith is permitted to take one duffel bag, one box of personal effects including the original 1970 Simon and Garfunkel album Bridge Over Troubled Water, and her grandmother's diamond ring. She remains under federal investigation for transferring $15 million from company accounts into a personal brokerage account three days before the collapse. Her son Leo, who worked in the legitimate trading division of Delinn Enterprises, is also under investigation based on accusations from a trader named Deacon Rapp. Her attorneys have forbidden her from contacting either of her sons.

Her rescuer is Connie Flute, her best friend since preschool, though the two have not spoken in three years. Their falling-out occurred when Connie's husband, Wolf, an acclaimed architect, insisted on pulling their $3 million investment from Delinn Enterprises because he believed Freddy was breaking the law. Meredith defended Freddy, and the argument turned ugly. Meredith did not attend Wolf's funeral. Now Connie is Meredith's only remaining connection. Wolf died of brain cancer two and a half years earlier, and Connie's daughter, Ashlyn, a doctor, has not spoken to her since a confrontation at the funeral. Both women are profoundly lonely.

Connie brings Meredith to her beachfront house in the remote Nantucket neighborhood of Tom Nevers. Their shared history stretches back to Catholic preschool in Villanova, on Philadelphia's Main Line. Meredith was exceptionally close with her father, Chick Martin, a tax attorney who called her "brilliant and talented" and sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to her, calling her his Silver Girl. At sixteen, Meredith fell in love with Connie's brother, Toby. The romance was intense, but Toby broke up with her the night of her high-school graduation.

Within days, intimidation begins. A photograph of Meredith taken from the water by someone disguised as a seal is left on the porch. Then "CROOK" is spray-painted across the front of the house. A local power washer named Dan Flynn removes the paint, and Connie feels a spark of attraction for the first time since Wolf's death. The tires on Connie's car are slashed, and a misspelled note reading "Theif, go home" is left on the windshield.

During her freshman year at Princeton, Meredith's father died of a brain aneurysm. Freddy Delinn, a charismatic, poor upperclassman, approached her about the loss. They bonded over shared grief: Freddy's brother David had been killed in an army training accident. They became inseparable, and Freddy proposed via telegram just as Meredith was about to visit Connie on Nantucket, a trip she canceled. In the early years of marriage, Meredith taught English at a Bronx high school while Freddy launched Delinn Enterprises. When she threatened to take their two young sons and leave, Freddy promised to fix everything. The SEC postulates the Ponzi scheme began approximately one year later. Their life transformed into one of lavish apartments, private schools, and homes in Palm Beach and Southampton.

On Nantucket, Connie begins dating Dan. On a boat outing, Meredith dives for the first time in decades, executing flawless dives that reconnect her to her pre-Freddy identity. At the lobster dinner afterward, Connie drinks too much and passes out. Dan does not call for weeks. Connie's own story unfolds in parallel. Wolf had prostate cancer that metastasized to his brain. He refused chemotherapy, choosing to complete his architectural commissions. Ashlyn blamed Connie for not forcing him to fight. At the funeral, Connie found Ashlyn and her girlfriend Bridget kissing upstairs and shouted at them in a moment compounded by grief and discomfort. Ashlyn severed contact.

The investigation grinds on. Meredith's attorney, Devon Kasper (Dev), asks her to identify code words from Freddy's files. She recognizes "Champ" as Freddy's nickname for their decorator, Samantha Champion Deuce, and recalls seeing Freddy touch Samantha's lower back in a way that unsettled her. When a former friend named Amy Rivers confronts Meredith at a salon, Amy reveals an investor's suicide and warns that Leo faces prison. Dev reassures Meredith that Leo has not been charged. Meredith also recalls Thad Orlo, a former Prudential trader whose apartment she and Freddy once sublet. Orlo left for a Swiss bank, and Freddy was always evasive about him. She gives this lead to Dev. She also examines a fake NASA certificate Freddy gave her, supposedly for a star named Silver Girl, and spots a handwritten alphanumeric code.

Connie reconnects with Dan after running into him at the grocery store. They exchange their most painful stories, and Dan tells Connie her drinking has worried him. From that day, Connie orders iced tea instead of wine.

The terror escalates when someone kills Harold, a seal who has been a comforting offshore presence, and leaves the carcass on the front porch with its throat cut. Connie's brother Toby then arrives, having sold his sailboat and accepted a coaching position at the Naval Academy. Connie has warned neither Toby nor Meredith of the other's presence. Meredith is shaken but gradually softens.

News breaks that Freddy conducted a six-and-a-half-year affair with Samantha Deuce. Reporters swarm the road outside Connie's house. Meredith takes stolen Ativan from Connie's medicine cabinet and sleeps for nearly twenty-four hours. She writes a brief statement, and Connie reads it to the press on national television. Meredith asks Dev to arrange a call with Freddy at Butner federal prison, but the warden reports that Freddy refuses.

Dev calls with major developments. Deacon Rapp was himself part of the scheme and was trying to frame Leo. Freddy's newly found secretary, Mrs. Edith Misurelli, confirms that Freddy forbade Leo from the seventeenth floor where the fraud operated. Leo is officially cleared. The code from the fake star certificate leads investigators to four Swiss accounts, each holding approximately $1 billion, all under the name Kirby Delarest. Dev reveals that Delarest was actually Thad Orlo operating under a second passport. The Feds ultimately recover nearly $12 billion, including funds in accounts under Samantha's name and under the name of Freddy's deceased brother, David.

Meredith's son Carver calls, urging her to divorce Freddy. In the emotional aftermath, Connie confesses that Freddy once kissed her and touched her at the Delinns' house in the south of France. They argue but reconcile the next morning. Meredith and Toby sleep together, an act she experiences as reclaiming her identity. She recalls that at the 2004 funeral of Connie and Toby's mother, Veronica O'Brien, Toby tried to take her to bed, but she refused out of loyalty to Freddy.

Ashlyn arrives late one night, pregnant and heartbroken. Her partner Bridget has left because Ashlyn wanted a baby and Bridget did not. Ashlyn plans to move home and live with Connie. The police arrest the vandals: a couple from Belarus, including a housekeeper named Dmitria whose life savings of $137,000 were lost through Delinn Enterprises. Meredith asks Connie to drop the charges against Dmitria, recognizing the scale of her loss, and Connie agrees. The SEC publicly credits Meredith's cooperation as instrumental in recovering the $12 billion.

Dev calls one final time: The prison priest has convinced Freddy to take Meredith's call. But Meredith declines. She will never get the answers she needs, and pursuing them would only keep her bound to him. She tells Dev she wants no news of Freddy at all, unless he dies.

In the epilogue, Meredith stays on Nantucket through the autumn. She buys a beat-up Jeep, takes a job shelving books at the Nantucket Atheneum, and changes her name back to Meredith Martin. She talks to Leo and Carver regularly. Plans take shape for Thanksgiving: both sons, Connie, Ashlyn, Dan, and Toby with his young son. Toby has invited her to live with him in Annapolis, promising "an honest life." On the eve of her fiftieth birthday, a package arrives from Toby: a vintage record player. Meredith puts on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album and, for the first time since Freddy's arrest, cries, releasing grief that reaches back to her father's death. When the song ends, she plays it again.