Chapter 8: Friends You Don't Know About
The screenshot went to David's email at 11:03 a.m.
By noon, two more messages had arrived from Diane.
Both were variations on the first — a mixture of instruction and threat, the language of a woman who had spent decades making problems disappear and could not yet accept that this one was different.
Cassandra forwarded all three without responding to any of them.
At two in the afternoon, David called.
Claire put him on speaker.
"Holt's office made a second contact this morning," he said.
"This time to the HR director directly.
They reached her at home."
Claire's hand tightened on the phone.
"What did they say?"
"They told her the transcript was being challenged and that if she proceeded with a statement, she could expect her retirement finances to be scrutinized.
Her pension.
Her late husband's estate settlement." A pause.
"It was a threat.
Carefully worded, but a threat."
"Is she all right?"
"She's angry.
She called me herself twenty minutes ago.
She said, and I'm quoting, *Tell your client that I kept that note for fourteen years because I knew this day would come, and I am not frightened of a bully in a good suit.*" Another pause.
"She's eighty-two years old and she has more backbone than most people I've worked with."
Mrs.
Johnson, who had been listening from the kitchen doorway, made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"What do we do about the threat to her?" Claire asked.
"I've documented it.
If they follow through, it becomes witness intimidation, which significantly worsens their position.
I've advised her to keep records of any further contact and to speak to no one from Holt's office without me present."
"And Diane's messages to Cassandra?"
"Those are already filed.
The language in the second message — *this ends the way I decide it ends* — is going to be very difficult for Holt to contextualize favorably." He paused.
"I want to file for a preliminary injunction by end of week.
I want to move before they find their footing."
"Do it," Claire said.
She hung up and looked at her mother.
Mrs.
Johnson was already at the kitchen table, her reading glasses on, going through the printed emails from Cassandra's drive with a pen in her hand.
"She contacted six people," Mrs.
Johnson said, without looking up.
"Between February and April 2001.
Three were hiring partners.
One was a professional reference Claire had listed on her application.
One was a former professor." She set the pen down.
"And one was your father."
Claire went still.
"My father had been dead for two years by then."
"Not your father." Mrs.
Johnson looked up.
"Your fiancé's father.
She contacted Daniel's father."
The name landed like something physical.
"Daniel left me four months after the miscarriage," Claire said slowly.
"He said he couldn't watch me fall apart."
"He left," Mrs.
Johnson said, "because his father told him that you had fabricated your credentials, that you were unstable, and that the miscarriage had been — the word used in the email is *convenient.*"
Claire sat down.
"She told Daniel's father that I invented the miscarriage."
"Yes."
"And he believed her."
"He had no reason not to.
He didn't know her.
She presented herself as a concerned professional contact with insider knowledge." Mrs.
Johnson's voice was very controlled.
"Daniel didn't leave because he was weak.
He left because he was lied to."
Claire stared at the table.
The kitchen was completely silent.
Then she said: "Does Daniel know?"
Mrs.
Johnson took off her reading glasses.
"That's your decision to make.
Not mine."
Claire nodded slowly.
She was quiet for a long time.
Outside, the afternoon light had shifted.
The garden beyond the window was ordinary and unhurried — birds, a breeze, the distant sound of a neighbor's radio.
Claire's phone was on the table in front of her.
She looked at it.
She didn't pick it up.
Not yet.
"One thing at a time," she said.
"Diane first."
Her mother reached across the table and covered her hand.
"Diane first," she agreed.
Two days later, Richard Holt withdrew from the case.
He sent no explanation.
His office issued a standard professional disengagement letter citing a conflict of interest.
Diane's name appeared on no further correspondence.
But that afternoon, a new name appeared on the legal filings.
Claire read it and called David immediately.
"Who is Marcus Vane?"
David was quiet for just a moment too long.
"He's not a lawyer," he said.
"He's a private investigator.
A very good one.
If Diane has hired him, she's not trying to win in court anymore."
May you like
"Then what is she trying to do?"
"She's trying to find something that makes you not want to continue."
