Chapter 10: What Brenda Said
She called me herself.
That surprised me.
It was a Friday evening, ten days after the hearing.
Grace had told me not to engage with anyone from the family without her present.
I almost let it go to voicemail.
But something made me answer — some instinct that said: *let her speak.
Let her put it on record.*
I put it on speaker and set the phone on the kitchen table.
My father was sitting across from me.
He didn't move.
"Chloe." Brenda's voice was warm.
Measured.
The voice of a woman who had spent decades being reasonable at the exact moments it served her.
"I think we've let this go far enough, don't you?"
"I'm listening," I said.
"This legal situation is damaging everyone.
Derek is devastated.
The family is in pain.
And frankly, you are a young woman at the beginning of her life, and this is not the way you want to start it — in courtrooms, with lawyers, with all of this ugliness."
"Tell me what you're proposing," I said.
"A settlement.
Generous.
The $312,000 returned in full, plus an additional $75,000 for your trouble.
The marriage annulled quietly.
Everyone walks away." A pause.
"No criminal referral.
No DA investigation.
No publicity."
I looked at my father.
His face was still.
"You want me to make the criminal referral go away," I said.
"I want everyone to move forward," Brenda said.
"That referral is based on a confused old man's statement and a vindictive ex-wife's paperwork.
It won't survive scrutiny.
But it will be expensive and painful for everyone involved, including you."
"Including you," I said.
A brief silence.
"I have been building this family's security for thirty years," Brenda said, and for the first time the warmth thinned slightly at the edges.
"I have protected what is ours.
I make no apologies for that."
"You coached a notary to prevent four women from reading documents they were signing," I said.
"You built a holding company to hide stolen money.
You helped your son defraud women who trusted him."
"That is a very dramatic interpretation—"
"It's Martin's interpretation," I said.
"On the record.
With a timestamp."
The silence this time was longer.
"Chloe." The warmth was gone now.
What was underneath it was flat and cold and very old.
"You are making a mistake.
You think you have enough.
You don't know what I have.
I have protected this family from worse than you, and I will—"
"Grace," I said.
Grace Okafor stepped out of the hallway, where she had been standing since the call began, and set her own phone — already recording — on the table beside mine.
"Mrs.
Ashworth," Grace said, "this is Grace Okafor.
I've been on this call from the beginning.
I want to make sure you're aware that what you just described — protecting the family from consequences — combined with the settlement offer made to a witness in an active criminal referral — constitutes potential witness tampering and obstruction." A pause.
"I'll be forwarding this recording to the DA's office Monday morning."
The line went silent.
Then Brenda said, very quietly: "You have no idea what you've done."
"Goodnight, Mrs.
Ashworth," Grace said.
The call ended.
My father looked at the phone on the table.
Then he looked at Grace.
"Is she right?" he asked.
"Did we just make it worse?"
"We just gave the DA's office obstruction on top of fraud and conspiracy," Grace said.
She picked up her phone and stopped the recording.
"No.
We made it significantly better."
She looked at me.
"How are you doing?"
I thought about it honestly.
"I'm all right," I said.
And I meant it.
Not because everything was resolved.
Not because the fear was gone.
But because I had listened to Brenda's voice — that warm, practiced, thirty-year-old voice — and I had felt nothing but clarity.
She had called me a mistake.
May you like
She was right.
Just not in the way she meant.
