Chapter 10 - Lauren's Quiet Week
The house was quiet in a way I only learned about later. Michael told me days afterward what that first week had been like for them, and the details stayed with me because they had nothing to do with me at all.
Lauren didn't leave the house much after the reunion. The kitchen island was still covered with the kind of aftermath you get after a big night out — dry cleaning bag from the burgundy gown hanging over a chair, the square diamond ring sitting in its little dish by the sink where she'd taken it off to wash her hands and then left it. Michael said he found her at the dining table on Monday afternoon with their old yearbook open, the spine cracked to our senior year.
She'd pulled it out to look for something to steady herself, I think. She ran her finger down the class superlatives and stopped at my photo. Most Likely to Succeed. There I was with the same dark hair pulled back, trying to look older than seventeen. She stared at it a long time.
Her phone kept lighting up beside the yearbook. The group chat for the reunion had not died down the way those things usually do. Someone had posted a photo of the ballroom, the chandeliers all lit, and then a string of messages followed.
*Did you see Emily Carter was there? I had no idea she was Chairman now.*
*She's owned the parent company for two years. My cousin works in their foundation tower.*
*She didn't say a word about it. She just sat there.*
Lauren read each one without replying. Michael said she turned the phone face-down after the third message, then turned it over again two minutes later to read them a second time. She opened the yearbook again and then closed it, as if neither the past nor the present was giving her the version she wanted.
That night they ate leftovers at the island and didn't turn on the TV. Michael was at the sink when she finally spoke. She'd been twisting that ring on her finger, not displaying it the way she had under the chandelier, just turning it back and forth.
"I need to tell you what I actually did," she said.
Michael dried his hands and waited.
"When I offered to get her hired, I wasn't trying to help her," she said. Her voice was flat and quick, like she wanted to get it out before she could soften it. "I wanted to feel more secure. I wanted to feel ahead. It wasn't generosity. It was... it was me trying to prove I was okay."
He didn't jump in to comfort her. He leaned against the counter and let the silence sit for a beat. I could picture him in that black suit shirt from the night before, now just in a plain t-shirt, listening the way he had listened to me in my office.
"Thank you for saying that out loud," he said after a moment. His tone wasn't angry. It was tired and honest. "I've been trying to figure out how to bring it up without making it worse."
She looked up at him, her eyes already wet. "Are you mad?"
"I'm embarrassed that you were put in that position, and that I walked in and made it bigger," he said. "But I'm not mad that you wanted to feel secure. I get that."
He told her then what I had said when he came to see me at the office the next morning. He kept my words exact, because he wanted her to hear that there was no hidden message to decode.
"She didn't gloat. She didn't threaten anything about my job," he told her. "She asked about my work, she asked if I was okay at home, and she said the evening was awkward for everyone and we should all just move forward. It was... neutral. Professional."
Lauren frowned a little, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Michael said she kept waiting for him to add that I'd been cold or cutting, that I'd made a comment about her dress or the ring or the offer. When he didn't, the frown deepened.
"That's it?" she asked. "She didn't say anything about me?"
"No," he said. "She left you out of it entirely. She treated it like what happened at work was separate from what happened at the table."
Lauren sat with that and Michael said he could see her wanting a villain. If I'd been cruel, she could be angry. If I'd been vengeful and threatened his job, she could be defensive. But a neutral response left her alone with her own replay. She pressed her palms into her eyes for a second and let out a breath that shook.
"I kept thinking she'd use it," she whispered. "That she'd hold it over us."
"She didn't," he said.
Later that night, after the kitchen was clean, Lauren sat at the small desk in their bedroom with a notecard and a pen. She started three different drafts and tore each one up. Michael watched from the doorway but didn't step in. On the fourth try she wrote a short note, folded it, and left it blank on the front. No favor, no ask to meet for coffee where someone might take a picture, no line about her husband working for my company.
"I need to apologize without asking for anything back," she said to him, more to herself than to him. "Not through you, not for a photo. Just because I was wrong."
May you like
Michael nodded. "That's yours to send when you're ready."
She left the note on the desk unsent that night. The ring stayed in its dish. The yearbook stayed closed. For the first time that week, she wasn't rehearsing what to say if I punished them. She was trying to figure out what to say if I didn't.
