Chapter 9: What Ellen Had Kept
I drove home slowly.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, I had decided I was going to tell Ellen everything Cassandra had said.
All of it.
Including the threat.
Ellen was in the garden when I came through the side gate.
She was kneeling beside the flower bed near the back wall, pulling weeds.
She looked up when she heard me.
"How did it go?"
I sat down on the bench nearby.
"She tried to tell me you provoked her.
Patricia Holt's statement shut that down before it went anywhere."
Ellen pulled another weed.
Set it aside.
"What else?"
"She threatened to say things about me.
About my business.
She said Michael had told her things."
Ellen was quiet for a moment.
Then she sat back on her heels and looked at me.
"Robert.
I need to tell you something.
And I need you to hear it before Cassandra finds a way to use it."
I waited.
"Two years ago, when Michael first brought Cassandra home — before I had any sense of who she really was — she and I had a conversation alone.
In the kitchen, while you and Michael were outside." Ellen set her gardening gloves on the bench beside me.
"She asked me about your business.
Specifically about the Hargrove contract.
She asked how you had won it over the Delacroix group."
The Hargrove contract.
I hadn't thought about that in two years.
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing she couldn't have found in the trade press.
I didn't know anything sensitive.
But I was friendly.
I answered her questions.
I thought she was just curious about your work." Ellen looked at her hands.
"About six months later, I found out that Cassandra's father runs a consulting firm.
One of his clients is the Delacroix group."
I stared at her.
"I didn't know what to do with that," Ellen said.
"I didn't know if it meant anything.
I didn't know if I had said something I shouldn't have.
I didn't know if she had been asking on purpose or if it was just conversation." She looked up at me.
"And I was afraid that if I told you, you would think I had done something wrong."
"Ellen."
"I know.
I should have told you."
"You should have told me the moment you found out about her father."
"I know." Her voice was steady but her eyes were bright.
"I've been carrying that for eighteen months.
Wondering if I helped her somehow.
Wondering if I gave her something she used."
I moved from the bench and crouched beside her on the path.
"Look at me."
She looked.
"You answered polite questions from a woman you had just met.
You didn't do anything wrong."
"But if she was gathering information—"
"Then that's on her.
Not on you." I took her hand.
"You have been protecting everyone in this family for so long that you've started believing their failures are your fault."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then her eyes filled, and she let them.
It was the first time she had cried since any of this began.
I stayed beside her on the garden path and held her hand while she did.
When she was done, she took a breath and straightened.
"What does Graham think?" she asked.
"He thinks Cassandra's threat tells us she's scared.
And that scared people make mistakes."
Ellen nodded slowly.
She picked her gloves back up.
"Robert," she said.
"I want to pursue it.
The civil case.
Whatever Graham thinks we can do." She looked at me steadily.
"Not for the money.
I want it on record.
I want what she did to me to exist somewhere official, where it cannot be deleted or explained away."
"Then that's what we'll do."
She put her gloves back on and turned back to the flower bed.
"And Michael?" she asked quietly.
I thought about the voicemail.
About the thirty-eight seconds.
About *she'll be fine, let's go.*
"Michael has to decide who he is," I said.
"We can't decide that for him."
May you like
Ellen nodded once.
And kept working.
