Chapter 3: What Was Written on the Paper
The note was not long.
Six sentences in Olivia's handwriting.
Neat, controlled, slanted slightly to the right — the same handwriting Michael had seen on birthday cards and grocery lists for two years.
He read it once.
Then again.
*Sophie — I am going to say this once and I will not repeat it.
You are an employee.
You are not a friend, a confidante, or a member of this family.
If you speak to Michael about anything beyond your duties, I will contact every household agency in Atlanta and make sure your name is flagged.
I will also make sure your brother's school situation becomes considerably more complicated.
This is not a threat.
It is a fact.
— O.*
Michael's hand was steady.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was not.
"She mentioned Ethan."
"She did," Margaret said.
"She threatened a twelve-year-old boy."
"She threatened the idea of him.
Which is worse." Margaret folded her hands back in her lap.
"Sophie showed it to me because she had no one else.
She was frightened, Michael.
Not for herself.
For that child."
Michael set the note down on the edge of the bed.
"How long have you had this?"
"Four days."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
Margaret looked at him steadily.
"Because I needed to know if you were ready to see it.
There is a difference between a man who suspects something and a man who is prepared to act on what he finds." She paused.
"Are you ready?"
He did not answer immediately.
He picked the note back up.
Read Ethan's name again.
Set it down.
"Yes," he said.
Margaret nodded once.
"Then there is something else you need to know." She reached back to the nightstand, this time pulling out her reading glasses and setting them on her nose.
"I am not the only one she has spoken to like this.
Three weeks ago, when the caterers came to do the tasting, Olivia sent their assistant — a young woman, couldn't have been more than twenty — out to her car in tears.
I watched it from the hallway.
I asked Sophie about it afterward."
"What did Sophie say?"
"She said it happens often.
That Olivia has a way of doing it that leaves no witnesses.
She waits until the room is almost empty.
One or two people.
Never a crowd." Margaret removed her glasses.
"She is careful, Michael.
She has been doing this for a long time."
Michael stood up from the edge of the bed.
He walked to the window.
The garden below was dark, just the outline of the hedges against the porch light.
"She told my father Sophie was making errors."
"I heard that conversation," Margaret said.
"I was in the sitting room.
She knew I was there."
He turned around.
"She knew?"
"She did not care." Margaret's voice did not waver.
"That is what I am trying to tell you.
She is not afraid of being seen by people she does not consider a threat." A pause.
"She has never considered me a threat."
The porch light outside flickered once and held.
"She is going to f!re Sophie before the wedding," Michael said.
"She is building the reason right now."
"Yes."
"And if I say nothing, Sophie loses her job, her reference, and possibly her brother's school placement." He turned back from the window.
"And Olivia walks down the aisle believing she got away with all of it."
Margaret said nothing.
She did not need to.
Michael picked up the note from the bed and folded it carefully along its original crease.
"I am going to need to think about how to handle this."
"I know," Margaret said.
"But do not think too long." She reached over and turned off the reading lamp.
"The wedding is in two weeks.
And Olivia is not finished yet."
The room went dark.
Michael stood there for a moment in the quiet, the folded note in his hand, his grandmother's words settling over him like something cold and final.
May you like
He had come home that afternoon with flowers.
He left his grandmother's room carrying something else entirely.
