Chapter 8: What Lauren Was Told
Richard’s phone stopped ringing. He didn’t answer. He stood with it in his hand, staring at Victor’s name as if the screen had become a witness.
Across the parking lot, Lauren had stopped beside a dark sedan. She wasn’t getting in. She was looking back at us.
Ethan took a step toward her, then hesitated.
“Don’t chase her just to make yourself feel better,” I said.
“I know.” He glanced at the phone in Richard’s hand. “But she shouldn’t have to hear this from him.”
Lauren came back on her own. Her veil stirred in the breeze, a bright, fragile thing against the hard gray pavement. She looked at Ethan, not Richard.
“What did Victor tell you about my mother?”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“Before the wedding,” she said. “What did he tell you?”
He looked at me. I didn’t help him.
“He said your mother had worked for the company,” Ethan began. “That she’d been unreliable. That she took records when she left.”
Lauren’s face went still. “Took them?”
“He said she stole company documents.”
The word landed between us with a weight all its own. My fingers curled around the strap of my purse. Inside it, the velvet locket box pressed against my ribs.
“And you believed him?” Lauren asked.
“I believed he knew more than I did.” Ethan swallowed. “He’s my uncle. He said there had been an investigation and that your mother had made trouble for the family. He didn’t show me anything.”
“But you let me think you’d never met her because you didn’t want to meet her.”
“I didn’t know what to think. I should’ve asked you. I should’ve asked her.”
“You had chances.”
“I know.”
His answer didn’t erase the accusation. It didn’t erase the months he’d let silence do the work for him.
Lauren’s gaze shifted to me. “He told you that too?”
“No.” I kept my voice level. “No one told me what he was telling you.”
That seemed to hit her harder than if I’d raised my voice. Her eyes dropped to the pavement.
“I knew Victor thought you were a problem,” she said. “He never said you stole anything to my face. He didn’t have to. He talked about the company’s past like it was a stain that followed us. He’d say people who weren’t used to that world could misunderstand things. That one wrong story could ruin a family.”
“Did he say that about me?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” She rubbed her thumb over the slim band of her wedding ring. “He’d bring up your job, the way you lived, how you raised me alone. He made it sound like you wouldn’t know how to behave around them. Like I’d have to protect you from being judged.”
“By keeping me away.”
“Yes.”
She looked up, and shame had stripped the careful polish from her face.
“I was afraid they’d look down on you,” she said. “And I was afraid they’d look down on me for being your daughter. I hated that I cared. But I did. I wanted to belong to Ethan’s world so badly that I let Victor make you sound like something I had to hide.”
The parking lot noise thinned around us. Somewhere beyond the church doors, a guest laughed too loudly, then went quiet. The wedding still waited inside, suspended between the vows that hadn’t been said and the truth no one could put back.
I wanted to reach for my daughter. My hands remembered every scraped knee, every fevered forehead. But wanting to comfort her was not the same as pretending she hadn’t hurt me.
“I can understand being afraid,” I said. “I can’t make your choice disappear.”
“I know.” Her mouth trembled. She pressed it closed. “I’m not asking you to.”
For a moment, none of us spoke.
Then Lauren turned to Ethan. “Did Victor show you proof?”
“No.”
“Did he ever?”
“No.”
“Then all he gave you was a story about my mother.”
Ethan lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
She looked at me again. “The ledger had his initials. The pages Ethan photographed—those are still with you?”
Ethan nodded. “I have them.”
“Then let me help find proof. Not because I think that makes things right. It doesn’t.” Lauren drew in a shaky breath. “But if Victor’s been lying about Mom, I want to know what else he’s done. I want to help get the truth in front of people who can’t pretend they didn’t see it.”
I studied her face. She wasn’t asking for my forgiveness. She was asking for work—something harder than a quick apology, and less comforting.
“You may find things you don’t want to know,” I said.
“I already have.”
“Helping doesn’t mean I’ll be ready to trust you.”
“I understand.”
“No,” I said softly. “You’re beginning to.”
She flinched, but she didn’t look away.
Richard finally lowered his phone. “I can tell you what I remember about the records and the clearance.”
Lauren turned toward him. “You can tell us the truth. That’s different from helping.”
He nodded. “You’re right.”
“And you don’t get to ask us to make you feel better about it.”
“I won’t.”
His phone buzzed in his palm. He glanced down, and a wash of color drained from his face.
“What?” Ethan asked.
“Victor’s calling again.”
Richard turned the phone facedown without answering.
A breeze tugged at Lauren’s veil. She reached to catch it, then stopped when her own phone vibrated inside her small bridal purse.
She pulled it out.
For one second, she only stared at the screen. Then she turned it toward me.
Victor’s name sat above a new message.
I know where Cal Mercer lives.
May you like
Lauren’s fingers tightened around the phone.
Behind us, the church doors opened. Somewhere inside, nearly two hundred people waited for a wedding that could no longer happen as if nothing had changed.
