Chapter 8: What Vanessa Chose
Three days after the Monday meeting, Vanessa Mitchell called me.
Not Ethan.
Me.
She had gotten my personal number from Ethan's phone, which told me she had thought carefully about the approach and decided that going around him was the only way I would take the call seriously.
She was right.
"Mrs.
Carter," she said.
"Thank you for answering."
"Vanessa." I was in my garden, deadheading the roses along the back fence.
I kept working while I listened.
"What can I do for you?"
A pause.
"I want to tell you something.
Not because it helps me.
I don't think it helps me at all.
But I think you should know it."
"Go ahead."
"My father told me about the acquisition plan eight months ago.
He told me the Carter Holdings situation was fragile and that the timing of the engagement was important for our family's financial position." She stopped.
"He didn't tell me about Thomas Reeves.
He didn't tell me about the wire transfers.
He told me it was a business strategy and that I would benefit from it and so would Ethan." Another pause.
"I want you to know that I did have real feelings for Ethan.
I'm not asking you to believe that changes anything.
I just — I needed you to know."
I set down my shears.
"Why?"
"Because you looked at me in that sitting room and said you didn't think I fully understood what I was part of." Her voice was careful and quiet.
"You were right.
And I've been thinking about that ever since."
I was quiet for a moment.
The garden was very still.
A bird moved in the oak tree at the far end of the fence.
"Vanessa," I said.
"Did your father ask you to make this call?"
"No.
He doesn't know I'm calling."
"Does he know the extent of what's been uncovered?"
"His attorney called him on Tuesday.
He knows." A pause.
"He's scared.
I've never seen him scared before."
"He should be," I said.
"What he did goes well beyond a business disagreement."
"I know." Her voice dropped.
"Mrs.
Carter — is Ethan all right?"
I looked at the roses along the fence.
Full and heavy, just beginning to turn at the edges.
"He will be," I said.
"He's angry right now.
He needs time."
"I understand." She seemed to gather herself.
"I'm not calling to ask for anything.
I just wanted to say — what I did on that lawn was unforgivable.
I knew you were a guest and I chose to humiliate you because you didn't look like what I expected.
That was about me.
Not you." A long pause.
"I'm sorry."
I picked up my shears again.
"I appreciate you saying that."
"Does it matter?
At this point?"
"It matters to me," I said.
"Whether it matters to Ethan is a question only he can answer."
She said goodbye quietly and ended the call.
I stood in the garden for a while after that.
The apology was real — I was fairly certain of that.
Real and too late and offered without any expectation of return, which was the only kind worth anything.
Vanessa Mitchell had grown up in a family where people were instruments, and somewhere along the way she had decided, at least in this one moment, not to be one.
That was not nothing.
May you like
It was also not enough to undo a lawn full of laughing guests and a garden hose and the particular cruelty of a woman who had known exactly what she was doing.
But it was something.
