Chương 11
“I’m not signing.”
Alexander looked at her.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
It was one of the first times she had admitted uncertainty to him.
He nodded.
“What do you need?”
“Nothing.”
“Victoria.”
“I need you not to fix it.”
His expression tightened.
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were.”
He looked away.
She continued, “You keep trying to repair things with action. Lawyers. Audits. statements. Money. Rules.”
“What would you prefer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Live with not knowing.”
He stared at her.
The old Alexander would have argued.
This one sat down.
“Okay.”
She nearly hated him for getting better at this.
The lawsuit forced discovery discussions.
Discovery forced Margaret to make choices.
Her attorneys fought to limit anything involving the letter as irrelevant to the physical assault.
Daniel argued the confrontation could not be separated from the circumstances Margaret herself had included in the proposed confidentiality agreement.
There were motions Victoria barely understood.
There were negotiations.
There were phone calls that cost four hundred dollars each.
No judge delivered a speech.
No secret document suddenly appeared.
Instead pressure accumulated.
Then Linda’s old laptop was found.
Not in a vault.
Not in a hidden room.
In a storage cabinet at a vendor that had handled decommissioned Reed family-office equipment.
The drive had been retained because the disposal contract had been disputed.
Most of it was useless.
Some files were recoverable.
One was a scanned draft of the farewell letter.
The document metadata identified Linda’s user account.
That did not prove Margaret wrote the words.
Another recovered email mattered more.
Linda had written to Margaret the afternoon before the letter reached Alexander.
Do you want the line about the baby left as discussed? I still think this is a terrible idea.
Margaret’s response consisted of six words.
Leave it. He needs to believe it.
Victoria read the printout in Daniel’s office.
Then she put it down.
There it was.
Seven years compressed into six words.
She expected triumph.
Instead she felt sick.
Daniel said nothing.
Victoria picked up the page again.
“Is it real?”
“Forensic review supports authenticity. Opposing counsel has not conceded anything.”
“She wrote it.”
“The email came from her account.”
“She wrote it.”
“Yes.”
Victoria pressed her fingers to her forehead.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
“I spent seven years wondering whether I should have tried harder.”
Daniel waited.
“I called. I wrote. I begged his mother to give him my number.”
“I know.”
“I thought maybe I had imagined how much we meant to each other.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Victoria.”
She shook her head.
“No. Don’t.”
She stood.
“I need to go get Sophie.”
It was a normal Tuesday.
That offended her.
Traffic on Lake Shore Drive was terrible.
A radio host argued about baseball.
At school, Sophie came out carrying a poster tube and complaining that someone named Maya had copied her idea for a solar-system project.
Victoria listened.
She asked appropriate questions.
She did not tell her daughter that six words written seven years earlier had just changed the architecture of her childhood.
At home, Sophie ate apple slices and peanut butter.
Victoria sat across from her.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you sad?”
“A little.”
“Because of Grandma Margaret?”
Sophie had begun using the title recently, though she had never met Margaret again.
Victoria had not corrected her.
“Because of something she did.”
Sophie chewed.
“Did she say sorry?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie considered that.
“If I slap Maya, I have to say sorry.”
Victoria nearly choked.
“You are not slapping Maya.”
“I said if.”
“No if.”
“But she copied Saturn.”
“Saturn belongs to everyone.”
“That makes no sense.”
Victoria laughed so hard she startled herself.
Sophie laughed too.
Later that night, after Sophie slept, Victoria cried at the kitchen table.
Not beautifully.
She wiped her nose with a paper towel because she could not find tissues.
When Alexander called, she almost ignored it.
Then she answered.
“Daniel told me.”
“Of course he did.”
“He asked permission.”
“I said yes.”
Silence.
Alexander breathed into the phone.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I don’t know what else to say.”
“Then don’t.”
“All right.”
Victoria pressed the paper towel against her eyes.
“I hated you.”
“I know.”
“No. I hated you in ways that were useful.”
He stayed quiet.
“I made you into someone who chose not to know Sophie. That made it easier.”
Alexander’s voice was low.
“I did choose not to keep looking.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“It matters.”
“Why are you helping me blame you?”
“Because you should.”
She laughed through the tears.
“You are exhausting.”
“You said that before.”
“When?”
“Boston.”
She remembered.
A tiny apartment sublet near Back Bay. A broken air conditioner. Alexander assembling a fan incorrectly because he refused to read instructions.
She closed her eyes.
“I loved you.”
He did not answer immediately.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to say that either.”
“Okay.”
Another silence.
Then he said, “I loved you too.”
Victoria put the phone down on the table without ending the call.
For a while neither spoke.
Margaret dismissed her lawsuit twelve days after the email surfaced.
No settlement.
No confidentiality agreement.
Her attorneys called it a decision to avoid further harm to the family.
Victoria’s attorneys called it strategic retreat.
Naomi called it “running away in pearls.”
Victoria told her to behave.
“I have behaved for four months.”
“You sent a journalist a trash-can emoji.”
“That was private.”
“It became public.”
“Nothing is private anymore.”
On that, Victoria could not argue.
The Reed foundation board accepted Margaret’s resignation two weeks later.
The announcement contained polite language about decades of service.
Alexander did not oppose the politeness.
Victoria expected him to.
When she asked why, he said, “Because what she did does not erase every other thing she has ever done.”
Victoria stared at him.
“You’re defending her.”
“No.”
“It sounds like it.”
May you like
“I’m refusing to make her simpler so I can hate her more efficiently.”
The sentence irritated Victoria because she understood it.
