Chương 10
Anna read every line.
“You used my hospital picture.”
“I wasn’t going to send it without asking.”
“You attached it.”
“I was angry.”
“You were preparing.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To protect you.”
“By putting my face on television?”
“By getting ahead of them.”
Anna stepped back from the table.
“This is why I didn’t tell you about the office.”
Vivian felt the accusation more deeply than she had expected.
“You think I would have exposed you?”
“I think you would have decided that exposure was the price of justice.”
“I would have asked.”
“After you attached the picture?”
Vivian looked at the email. Her words sounded forceful, reasonable, and nothing like love.
“I’m sorry.”
Anna shook her head. “Delete it.”
Vivian selected the draft.
“No. Permanently.”
She deleted it, emptied the folder, and closed the laptop.
Anna remained standing.
Vivian said, “I am afraid that if we don’t move faster than him, he wins.”
“I’m afraid everyone is going to own a piece of what happened except me.”
The sentence stayed between them.
Vivian nodded.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Stop reading everything.”
“I can reduce it.”
“Stop.”
Vivian opened her mouth and closed it.
“Okay.”
“And don’t speak to reporters.”
“Okay.”
“And when lawyers ask me a question, let me answer.”
“I’m working on that.”
“Work harder.”
Vivian almost smiled.
Anna did not.
“Okay,” she said again.
The criminal hearing began six weeks after the wedding.
By then, the cut near Anna’s temple had healed into a short pink scar partly hidden by her hair. She wore it down instead of tying it with a ribbon. She had not returned to her apartment. The basil plant died despite her prediction.
Outside the courthouse, reporters gathered behind metal barriers. Maya arranged for Anna and Vivian to enter through a side door. Even so, a photographer shouted Anna’s name as they crossed the lobby.
Anna flinched but kept walking.
Vivian did not turn.
Inside, Graham sat beside Daniel Crewe and a criminal defense attorney. He wore a dark suit rather than a tuxedo. Without the ballroom and its chandeliers, he looked less powerful but not smaller. Power had never depended only on appearance. It lived in the people who moved when he entered, the calls returned, the doors opened before he reached them.
Celia sat three rows behind him with her own lawyer.
She was not wearing her wedding ring.
Anna noticed. Her face did not change.
Lenora sat near the aisle.
Several wedding guests had been subpoenaed. The board member who claimed to have been speaking to someone studied the floor. The physician who examined Anna whispered with the prosecutor. Frances held her husband’s hand, though their shoulders did not touch.
The hearing concerned evidence and the conditions of the case, not guilt. The security recording would not be played in open court that day. Graham’s attorney argued that it should remain sealed because the wedding was private and release would prejudice future proceedings.
The prosecutor agreed that public release was unnecessary but described the footage as clear, continuous, and consistent with Anna’s statement.
Clear.
Continuous.
The words moved through the room.
Graham turned toward Daniel. Daniel wrote something on a legal pad.
Afterward, Graham’s attorney approached Maya in the corridor.
“The offer remains open,” he said.
“Not on those terms.”
“He is willing to increase the amount.”
Anna stood beside Maya.
The attorney looked at her directly. “Ms. Hart, litigation will not restore what happened. It will prolong it.”
Anna’s face went pale, but her voice stayed steady.
“Then tell him to stop prolonging it.”
The attorney’s eyes shifted toward Vivian, perhaps expecting the line had come from her.
Vivian said nothing.
It was the hardest useful thing she had done.
Celia asked to meet Anna two days later.
Anna refused.
A week passed. Then she changed her mind.
They met in Maya’s conference room with both attorneys present. Vivian waited in the bakery downstairs.
She bought coffee and watched pedestrians push through dirty snow along the sidewalk. A man in a delivery jacket balanced six pizza boxes on one shoulder. A woman argued into her phone about a parking ticket. Life moved with irritating confidence.
Vivian checked the time every three minutes.
The meeting lasted nearly two hours.
When Anna came downstairs, her eyes were swollen but dry.
“Well?”
“She apologized.”
“For what?”
“A lot of things.”
“Did it help?”
“I don’t know.”
Vivian handed her the coffee she had bought twenty minutes earlier. It was cold.
Anna drank it anyway.
They sat near the bakery window.
“She said Graham told her I had become attached to him,” Anna said. “He said I resented their engagement and tried to interfere.”
“Did she believe him?”
“She didn’t want to believe me.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“It felt the same.”
Vivian nodded.
“Celia knew he had a temper,” Anna continued. “He broke a bathroom door once. He threw her phone into the pool during a vacation. He apologized afterward. Her father told her marriage would settle him down.”
Vivian looked toward the street.
“He isn’t weather.”
“What?”
“Something that settles.”
Anna gave a small, humorless smile.
“Celia filed for divorce this morning.”
“Because of the meeting?”
“She decided before. She wanted to tell me herself.”
“Do you forgive her?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“Do you hate her?”
Anna considered.
“No. That would be easier.”
Celia also provided messages showing that Graham had instructed Daniel to prepare Anna’s separation agreement before the company’s investigation into her complaint was complete. One message described the payment as “cheaper than letting her develop a story.”
The company’s independent investigators requested access to Daniel’s emails.
Daniel resigned before they received it.
His resignation statement cited family health issues.
May you like
No one believed it. Many pretended to.
Rachel supplied her copies of the altered expense requests through counsel. Two other employees described Graham blocking doorways during arguments. The former driver would not speak. The bartender agreed to an interview but refused to sign a statement.
