Chapter 5: Diane
Her name was Diane Kowalski.
I found her on a Tuesday afternoon, sitting at the back corner table of a coffee shop twelve minutes from our house, nursing an Americano and looking like someone who had been waiting for this conversation for longer than I had.
She was mid-forties, sharp-eyed, with the kind of stillness that comes from having been through something and surviving it.
She worked in Lauren's division.
She had worked there for six years.
D.K.
She had reached out to Ryan, not the other way around.
That was the first thing she told me.
"I need you to understand that," she said.
"I contacted him because I thought he deserved to know what was happening before it was too late to protect himself."
I wrapped both hands around my coffee cup.
"Protect himself from what?"
Diane glanced toward the door, then back at me.
"Lauren has been falsifying project reports," she said.
"For at least eighteen months.
She's been inflating completion rates, misattributing budget overruns to other team members, and signing off on vendor contracts that don't exist."
I stared at her.
"The money from those contracts," she continued, "goes to a consulting LLC.
The LLC has one registered member." She slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
I opened it.
The name on the LLC registration was Lauren's, listed under a slightly varied spelling of her middle name.
The address was a mailbox service two towns over.
"She's been doing this for a year and a half," Diane said.
"And she's been doing it on projects that Ryan managed."
The coffee cup was warm in my hands.
I focused on that.
"His name is on the reports?"
"His signature is on the reports.
Whether he signed them knowingly or whether she forged them — I don't know.
I genuinely don't know." Diane's voice was careful.
"That's what I told him.
I told him he needed to find out what he had signed and when, because when this comes apart — and it will come apart — anyone whose name is on those documents is going to be questioned."
"When did you tell him this?"
"Three weeks before the picnic."
Three weeks.
He had known for three weeks and said nothing to me.
"The message at the beach," I said.
"'Don't say anything.'"
Diane nodded.
"I saw Lauren arrive.
I was worried he'd confront her in front of everyone.
I was trying to protect him."
I set the paper down on the table between us.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
She looked at me steadily.
"Because I went back through the records last week.
There's a board audit scheduled for October.
And whoever is holding those signed reports when the audit starts — that's who the board is going to look at first."
October.
The promotion decision was end of September.
"She's going to give him the promotion," I said slowly.
"And then when the audit starts, he's the senior project manager.
He's the one with authority over those reports.
He's the one they look at."
Diane said nothing.
She didn't need to.
I sat very still.
"Does Ryan know about the audit?"
"I don't think so.
Not yet."
I picked up the paper and folded it back along its crease.
"Can you get me the reports?
The ones with his signature?"
Diane reached into her bag and placed a manila envelope on the table.
"I made copies two weeks ago," she said.
"I was hoping I wouldn't need to give them to you."
I took the envelope.
Outside, a bus went past the window.
A woman pushed a stroller.
Two men laughed at something on a phone.
The world outside the coffee shop was entirely ordinary.
I thought about Ryan kissing the top of my head that morning.
I thought about the coffee I had poured him.
I thought about Mason, in the back seat, telling me about the late-night texts since before school ended.
I put the envelope in my bag, thanked Diane, and walked out into the afternoon.
May you like
I sat in my car for four minutes without starting it.
Then I called my sister.
