Chương 5
“So yes?”
“Yes.”
The attorney wrote something.
Nia asked, “Has Ms. Pierce complained?”
“Yes.”
“What is she alleging?”
The attorney paused.
“That Ms. Reed assaulted her.”
Maya laughed.
Nobody else did.
“Sorry.”
Nia said, “Do you have footage?”
“Not of the contact itself.”
“Witnesses?”
“Several.”
“Supporting Ms. Pierce?”
“We are collecting statements.”
Maya looked at Scott.
He looked uncomfortable.
“Did Vanessa actually ask the hotel to fire me?”
The HR director answered.
“Ms. Pierce’s office informed our events department this morning that the Pierce Foundation is reconsidering future bookings.”
There it was.
Not fire her.
Something bigger and cleaner.
Nia folded her arms.
“How much business?”
The HR director did not answer.
Scott did.
“About nine hundred thousand annually.”
Maya stared at him.
Nia said, “And now we understand the suspension.”
“That is not fair,” the HR director said.
“Fair rarely gets this many attorneys before lunch.”
After the meeting, Nia walked Maya to the employee cafeteria.
“You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Maya bought scrambled eggs she did not want.
Nia drank coffee with enough sugar to make it almost solid.
“You planning to talk to reporters?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You planning to sue the hotel?”
Maya stared at her.
“No.”
“Also good.”
“Do you always ask terrifying questions casually?”
“I’m fifty-four. Everything becomes casual eventually.”
Maya pushed the eggs around.
“What would you do?”
Nia looked at her.
“About what?”
“The job.”
“You don’t have to decide today.”
“They could decide for me.”
“They could.”
“That’s helpful.”
“You want comforting or useful?”
“Useful.”
“Write down everything you remember while it’s fresh. Do not coordinate stories with other staff. Do not delete anything from your phone. Do not post about the Pierces. If anyone offers you money in exchange for silence, call me before you sign anything.”
Maya frowned.
“Do you think they will?”
“I think wealthy people sometimes mistake quiet for the same thing as solved.”
At almost the same hour, Eleanor stood in the upstairs dressing room of the house she had lived in for thirty-two years and tried to remove the ivory gown.
Her fingers could not manage the zipper.
Richard stood behind her and reached for it.
She moved away.
“I can do it.”
He lowered his hand.
The zipper did not move.
Eleanor tried again.
After the third attempt, she whispered a word she would have scolded Vanessa for using at sixteen.
Richard looked at the floor.
Eleanor began to laugh.
The laugh turned into something else.
She pressed both hands against the dresser.
Richard waited.
That was new for him.
After a while Eleanor said, “Help me.”
He unzipped the gown slowly.
The torn beads at the cuff caught on the fabric.
Two fell onto the carpet.
Richard bent to pick them up.
“Leave them.”
He straightened.
“They’ll get in the vacuum.”
“Then the vacuum can have them.”
He looked at her.
She sat on the bench in her slip and stared at her wrist.
The redness had darkened into the beginning of a bruise.
Richard’s face changed.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Look at it like that.”
“How am I supposed to look at it?”
“As mine.”
He stood very still.
Eleanor touched the bruise.
“It happened to me, Richard.”
“I know.”
“No. You’re already making it something you failed to prevent.”
His mouth opened.
She raised a hand.
“You can feel guilty later. I don’t have room for it this morning.”
Richard sat on the edge of the bed.
He had slept perhaps an hour.
His bow tie from the gala was still on the dresser because he had missed the wastebasket when he threw it.
“Did she hurt you before?”
Eleanor did not answer immediately.
He did not repeat the question.
“Not like that.”
“You said that last night.”
“She squeezed my arm once in the car.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Eleanor looked at him.
“You were on speakerphone telling someone in Denver that the acquisition had been mispriced.”
Richard closed his eyes.
“That is not an answer.”
“Yes, it is.”
He looked away.
“She apologized,” Eleanor said. “Five minutes later. She cried.”
“Vanessa cried?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she had hurt me.”
“Then she knew.”
“She knew that time.”
Richard stood.
“I’m calling an attorney.”
“That is exactly why I didn’t tell you.”
He stopped.
“You think I’m going to turn this into a war.”
“I think you are very good at wars.”
“And what do you want?”
Eleanor looked toward the black cane resting beside the dressing table.
It had a fresh silver scrape near the bottom where it struck the marble.
“I don’t know yet.”
Richard’s frustration showed.
She pointed at him.
“That. That expression. You hate not knowing the next move.”
“My wife was humiliated in front of two hundred people.”
“Our daughter did it.”
“That makes it worse.”
“It makes it complicated.”
“No, Ellie. It makes it worse.”
Eleanor looked at the bruise again.
“Both can be true.”
Vanessa spent the morning in her condominium thirty floors above the river refusing calls.
At first there were eleven.
Then thirty-four.
Then seventy.
Her publicist sent a draft statement.
Vanessa deleted it.
Her assistant sent another.
Vanessa deleted that too.
A board member named Celia Grant texted:
You need to say something before other people decide what happened.
Vanessa typed:
Other people have already decided.
She erased it.
On the kitchen island sat the gala binder she had carried home. Inside were seating plans, donor lists, auction totals, stage cues, and the speech she had never delivered.
At 8:42 she poured coffee.
At 8:44 she poured it out.
At 9:03 she watched the seven-second video for the first time.
She hated Maya instantly.
Not because Maya had lied.
Because she had not.
The server stood still while Vanessa pointed toward the exit. Behind her, Eleanor looked small and injured.
Vanessa watched twice more.
The fourth time she muted it.
May you like
Without her own voice, the clip was worse.
Her face looked like her mother’s.
