Chapter 6: What Amanda Knew
I stepped back from the door.
Amanda came in, glanced at the sleeping girls, and sat down at the table without being invited.
She set the envelope between us.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"About the girls?
Eight months." She folded her hands on the table.
"About Eleanor?
Since before Daniel proposed."
I sat down across from her.
"Then why—"
"Because I loved him," she said simply.
"And I thought I could manage Eleanor.
I thought if I understood her well enough, I could work around her." A pause.
"I was wrong about that."
"What's in the envelope?"
"Eleanor has a personal assistant.
Had, as of this morning—I don't know what her status is now.
Her name is Carla Voss.
She's worked for Eleanor for eleven years." Amanda pushed the envelope toward me.
"Three months ago, Carla came to me.
She said she'd been asked to do something she wasn't willing to do anymore, and she needed someone to give the documents to."
I opened the envelope.
Inside were photocopies.
Dozens of them.
Bank transfer records, internal memos on Harden Systems letterhead, a series of emails between Eleanor and a law firm I didn't recognize, and at the bottom, a single audio file burned onto a small disc with a date written on it in marker.
The date was eight years and four months ago.
Two weeks before I fled Chicago.
"Is this—"
"The original recording," Amanda said.
"Or rather, the file it was edited from.
Carla found it on Eleanor's private server.
The full version is forty-seven minutes long." She paused.
"Daniel never said what Carla cut out.
The line Eleanor played you was real—he said it.
But it was about a product launch.
A competitor had leaked their development timeline and Daniel was in crisis mode.
Someone on the call suggested he delay the launch because his lead analyst was pregnant and the team needed her." She looked at me steadily.
"He said a child right now would destroy everything.
He meant the product.
He meant the competitor would win the market window."
I stared at the disc.
"Eleanor took forty-seven minutes of audio and found eleven words," I said.
"Yes."
I set the disc down carefully, the way you set down something that might break if you aren't gentle with it.
"Why are you giving this to me?" I asked.
"You could give it to Daniel."
"I am giving it to Daniel," Amanda said.
"Through you.
Because he needs to hear it from you first.
Because you're the one who ran because of those eleven words, and you're the one who deserves to be in the room when the full recording plays."
I looked at her.
"You're a better person than I expected."
"I'm a practical person," she said.
"Which sometimes looks the same." She stood.
"There's more in that envelope.
The bank transfers show Eleanor has been diverting foundation funds.
The foundation that organized the flower girl raffle—it's a Harden family foundation.
Eleanor controls the board.
Carla believes Eleanor arranged for your daughters to be selected."
I felt the room shift slightly.
"She put them on the list," I said.
"She wanted them there."
"Carla thinks so.
She thinks Eleanor wanted to control the reveal.
Bring the girls in on her terms, in her space, with her lawyers present and her narrative already prepared." Amanda's voice was even.
"She didn't expect Gerald."
"Nobody expected Gerald."
"No." For the first time, something that might have been a smile crossed Amanda's face.
"That was a very good surprise."
She moved toward the connecting door.
"Amanda," I said.
She stopped.
"I'm sorry about your wedding."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Don't be.
I think I always knew, somewhere, that Daniel was still looking for something.
I just didn't know it had a name." She glanced at the sleeping girls.
"Two names, as it turns out."
She went back through the door and closed it softly behind her.
I sat at the table with the envelope open in front of me until the sky outside the window began to go gray.
Then I picked up my phone and sent Daniel one message:
*We need to talk before you see your mother.
Come at seven.*
His reply came in under a minute.
*I'll be there.*
I set the phone down.
Betty rolled over in her sleep and murmured something.
Mia didn't move, lying on her back with her arms at her sides, perfectly still, the way she always slept—as if she were listening to something even in her dreams.
I thought about Eleanor, somewhere in this same building, revising her plans.
I thought about eleven words cut from forty-seven minutes.
I thought about the yellow booties I had bought and packed and carried across the country and still had in a box at the back of my closet in Denver.
May you like
I didn't sleep.
But for the first time in eight years, I wasn't afraid of the morning.
