Chapter 6: What the Older Woman Kept
The door closed behind Rachel.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then two of the guests near the window started talking at once, and David's mother raised one hand and the room went quiet again.
"Give them a moment," she said.
To everyone.
About no one in particular.
People sat.
Someone poured water.
The flower girl was guided gently to a seat by an aunt who had spent the last twenty minutes looking like she wanted to be anywhere else.
David set Sophie down on a chair and crouched in front of her.
"Are you all right?"
Sophie considered this seriously.
"My tummy hurts."
"Mine too," David said.
"We'll get you something to eat in a little while.
Can you wait?"
She nodded.
He stood and turned to Elena.
They looked at each other across the space where a wedding had been.
"I didn't know," he said.
"About the job.
About any of it.
I thought you left because—" He stopped.
"I thought I had done something.
I spent a year trying to figure out what I'd done."
"I know," Elena said.
"I should have told you.
I was too ashamed."
"You had nothing to be ashamed of."
"I know that now."
They weren't touching.
They were standing three feet apart in a room full of people, speaking quietly enough that only the people closest could hear.
But something in the air between them had changed — some pressure that had been building since the door swung open was beginning, very slowly, to release.
The older woman from the back of the room approached.
She was perhaps seventy, in a gray dress, with the kind of steady manner that comes from having seen enough of life not to be easily rattled.
"I'm Margaret," she said to Elena.
"I'm David's aunt.
His father's sister." She held out her phone.
"I want to show you what I have."
On the screen were three photographs.
The first showed Rachel in the hallway outside the dark room, key in hand, door not yet closed.
The second showed the door closed, Rachel's back to the camera, key going into her clutch.
The third showed Rachel walking away, smoothing the front of her dress.
The timestamps read two hours and fourteen minutes before the ceremony.
"I didn't know what she was doing," Margaret said.
"I thought perhaps she was storing something.
Then I thought — no.
Something is wrong here." She looked at Elena.
"I almost didn't take the pictures.
I almost told myself I was being foolish."
"You weren't," Elena said.
"No." Margaret looked toward the door Rachel had walked through.
"I've seen that expression before.
On a different face, a long time ago.
I recognized it." She paused.
"I'll send these to you.
And I'll write down exactly what I saw and when.
If you need a witness, I'll be one."
David put his hand on his aunt's shoulder.
"Thank you, Margaret."
She patted his hand once, briskly, the way people do when sentiment makes them uncomfortable but they feel it anyway.
"Don't thank me.
Get your daughter something to eat."
Elena almost smiled.
It was the first time her face had moved toward anything other than fear or steadiness since the door opened.
Then David's phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His jaw tightened.
"It's Rachel."
Nobody told him what to do.
The room simply waited.
He answered it and put it on speaker without being asked — an instinct, or a decision, it was hard to tell which.
Rachel's voice came through clearly.
"I want you to listen carefully," she said.
"I have copies of everything.
The messages.
The documents.
Everything I showed you and everything I didn't.
If you involve an attorney, if you hand anything to the police, if you speak to anyone about what happened today — I will make sure those copies go somewhere that damages you both.
Not just Elena.
You."
David looked at Elena.
Elena looked at the phone.
"What do you think you have on me?" David said.
"Financial records," Rachel said.
"From your company.
Transactions that could be interpreted in ways you wouldn't like.
I've had them for months.
I kept them because I hoped I'd never need them." A pause.
"I still hope that.
This doesn't have to go any further."
David's mother had moved to stand beside him.
She was looking at the phone with an expression that had passed through shock and arrived somewhere much colder.
"Rachel," David said.
"I'm going to ask you one question."
"Ask."
"Did you fabricate those financial records the same way you fabricated the employment documents?"
Silence.
"Because if you did," he said, "my attorney is going to find that out.
And threatening someone with fabricated evidence is a different kind of crjme than sending forged emails."
The silence stretched.
Then Rachel said, very quietly: "You have no idea what I'm capable of."
The call ended.
Margaret was already writing something in a small notebook she had produced from her handbag.
She tore the page out and handed it to David.
"My nephew is a prosecutor," she said.
May you like
"In this state.
Call him tonight."
