Chapter 6: What Lauren Had Been Carrying
She opened the door on the second knock.
She looked like she hadn't slept.
The baby was on her hip, one small fist wrapped around the collar of her shirt, the toy giraffe tucked under her arm.
Lauren looked at me, then at the woman standing beside me — my colleague Dr.
Patricia Osei, who had agreed to come as a witness without asking too many questions — and then back at me.
"You came," Lauren said.
"Can we come in?"
She stepped back from the door.
The apartment was small and carefully kept.
Baby things everywhere — a folded blanket on the couch, a row of small shoes by the door, a mobile hanging in the corner that played a soft looping tune.
Nothing like the life Brandon had described when he talked about the family he'd built.
Lauren sat on the edge of the couch.
Patricia sat in the chair near the window.
I sat across from Lauren.
The baby reached for the giraffe, found it, settled.
"His name is Noah," Lauren said.
"In case you were wondering."
"He's beautiful," I said.
And I meant it.
She looked down at him.
Something moved across her face that I didn't have a name for.
"I've been trying to figure out what to say to you for a year," she said.
"I wrote it down once.
Three pages.
I threw it away."
"You don't have to say it now."
"Then why are you here?"
I looked at her directly.
"Are you tired, Lauren?"
Her chin came up.
Her eyes filled.
"Yes," she said.
"God, yes."
"Tell me what happened.
From the beginning.
Not the version you told Brandon.
The real one."
She was quiet for a moment.
Noah made a small sound.
She shifted him to her other hip.
"Brandon came to me about eighteen months before he filed for divorce," she said.
"Not romantically.
Not at first.
He said he needed someone he could trust.
Someone outside his firm.
He said he had an opportunity — a zoning decision that was going to go a certain way, and he knew people who would pay well to know about it before it became public." She paused.
"He said it was a one-time thing.
He said no one would ever know.
He said all I had to do was let him use my name to set up a company.
That I'd receive a percentage.
That it was essentially paperwork."
"And you agreed," I said.
"I was in debt.
Real debt.
Not the kind you talk about at brunch.
The kind that keeps you up at night." She looked at her hands.
"I told myself it was a gray area.
I told myself I wasn't really doing anything."
"When did Marcus come into it?"
"Marcus was already in my life.
We'd been together for almost two years.
Brandon didn't know about him.
I kept them completely separate." She closed her eyes briefly.
"When I found out I was pregnant, I didn't know whose it was.
I genuinely didn't know.
And Brandon — by then he'd started the affair.
He was telling me he was going to leave you.
He was talking about the future.
And I thought —" She stopped.
"You thought it was easier," I said.
"I thought it was safer." Her voice was very quiet.
"Because by then I knew what Brandon was capable of.
I knew what he had on me.
If I told him the baby might not be his, he would have used the company, the transfers, all of it — he would have made sure I was the one who went down for it."
Patricia had not moved in her chair by the window.
"He threatened you," I said.
"He didn't have to say it out loud.
He was very good at making things clear without saying them."
"Lauren.
I need to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly."
She looked at me.
"Do you have anything?
Emails, messages, records — anything that documents what he asked you to do and what he told you the consequences would be if you didn't cooperate?"
She was very still.
"Lauren."
"There's a folder," she said.
"I kept copies of everything.
Every transfer record.
Every message.
Every instruction he sent through the consulting account." She looked at Noah.
"I kept it because I was afraid.
Because I knew that if this ever came apart, he would make sure I was standing alone when it did."
"Where is the folder?"
She looked up at me.
Her eyes were red now, fully.
"Why are you helping me?
After everything I did."
I thought about the fertility clinic parking lot.
About her hand on mine.
About the fact that some of what she'd done had been done to survive a man I had also tried to survive, just in a different way.
"I'm not helping you," I said.
"I'm helping the prosecutor who already has a case open and needs a witness who was inside the room."
Lauren blinked.
"There's a prosecutor?"
"Her name is Adrienne Cole.
She's been building this for months.
What you have in that folder could be the difference between Brandon walking away with a settlement and Brandon being formally charged."
Lauren looked at Noah for a long time.
"If I cooperate," she said, "what happens to me?"
"That's between you and your own attorney.
I can't promise you anything.
But I can tell you that Douglas Sterling will make sure Adrienne Cole knows you came forward voluntarily."
She was quiet.
Noah dropped the giraffe.
She picked it up.
He grabbed it back.
"The folder is in the bedroom closet," she said.
"Behind the winter coats."
She didn't move to get it.
Not yet.
She just sat there, holding her son, in the quiet apartment with the mobile playing its soft loop in the corner.
"I'm sorry, Gwen," she said.
"I know it doesn't fix anything."
"No," I said.
May you like
"It doesn't."
But I stayed until she was ready to get up.
