Chapter 9 - What the Baby Was Worth
Vanessa did not answer.
For the first time since the gala, she looked afraid without an audience to impress.
Ruth slid a box of tissues across the table.
“You need your own attorney.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“I can’t advise you. I can tell you to preserve your records and stop signing anything you don’t understand.”
Vanessa looked at me.
“I really am pregnant.”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“I thought you’d think I faked it.”
“Your pregnancy was never the wrong thing you did.”
She covered her mouth.
I waited until she lowered her hand.
“You threw wine on me,” I said. “You lied about being afraid of me. You helped them use my loss as entertainment.”
“I know.”
“No. I need you to hear it without putting Everett in front of it.”
Tears slipped down her face.
“I did those things.”
The admission did not make me like her.
It made the room more honest.
She took out her phone and opened a message thread.
Diane had sent a photograph of the ballroom seating chart.
Another message identified where I would stand during the sponsor reception.
Then came one from Everett.
If Claire starts crying, don’t engage. Mom will handle her.
I read it twice.
Vanessa whispered, “He said you refused to accept the divorce.”
“He had never asked me for one.”
She looked sick.
There was more.
Everett had promised the house would belong to Vanessa before the baby arrived.
He had also told her Northline was replacing me as a guarantor.
“Replacing you with whom?” Ruth asked.
Vanessa looked at the table.
“My father.”
Her father owned a regional medical-supply company.
Not a billionaire.
A man with a successful business and enough savings to become useful.
“Has he signed anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call him,” Ruth said.
Vanessa stood so abruptly that her chair scraped the floor.
She stepped into the hall.
Through the glass, I watched her press the phone to her ear.
Her shoulders folded inward.
When she returned, her face had drained.
“He sent documents Friday.”
“Did your father sign?”
“He wanted his accountant to look first.”
I let out a breath.
Vanessa started crying harder.
Everett had not simply found a woman who could give him a child.
He had found another family whose money might keep him upright.
Ruth asked whether Vanessa would preserve the messages for investigators through her own counsel.
She nodded.
Then she looked at me.
“He said something else.”
“What?”
“That if the board moved against him, he had enough to take you down with him.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did he say he had?”
“A recording.”
May you like
Of all the things I had expected, that was not one.
Then I remembered the night I had begged him not to tell anyone about Northline.
