Chapter 3 #2
Brooke must have seen it land because the softness returned instantly. She stepped closer. “I’m not your enemy. I know you think I am, but I’m not. I have begged him to be patient with you. I have defended you more than you know.”
“Against whom?”
Brooke’s silence answered.
Annie smiled then, because the alternative was letting Brooke see the damage. “Against yourself.”
Brooke’s face did not change. “Against his own doubts.”
Maggie appeared in the doorway with perfect timing. “Annie? The Christie call moved up. They’re on the line.”
“Thank you.” Annie did not look away from Brooke. “We’re done.”
Brooke stepped back. “I hope you keep seeing Bea.”
“I won’t.”
“That would be a mistake.”
“For you, maybe.”
For the first time, Brooke’s mask slipped fully.
The contempt beneath it was not dramatic. It was worse. Calm. Old. Settled.
“You really don’t see it, do you?” Brooke said. “You think the problem is that I want your life. Annie, I had access to Nathan long before he knew your name. If I had wanted him, I could have had him.”
Annie’s pulse thudded once in her throat.
“Then why are you still here?” she asked.
Brooke’s smile returned, small and private. “Because someone has to make sure he doesn’t ruin himself trying to keep a promise to you he made before he understood the cost.”
She left the bakery bag on the reception table and walked out.
Annie stood very still until the elevator doors closed.
Maggie moved beside her. “Are you okay?”
That nearly broke her. Annie turned away toward her office. “No. But cancel my eleven.”
Maggie followed. “Done.”
“And find me everything public on Dr. Beatrice Lane. Licensure, board complaints, affiliations, family connections, anything you can get without doing anything illegal.”
Maggie did not ask why. “How fast?”
“Fast.”
For the next hour, Annie tried to work and failed. She stared at donor profiles while Brooke’s voice repeated in her head.
If I had wanted him, I could have had him.
That was the poison in Brooke’s confidence. She did not sound like a woman competing. She sounded like a woman who believed the outcome had always belonged to her and resented the delay.
At noon, Nathan texted. Can we talk tonight? Just us. No Brooke.
Annie stared at the words until they blurred.
She wanted to answer. She wanted to punish him by waiting. She wanted to be above that instinct. She wanted so many contradictory things that she put the phone face down and did nothing.
At twelve twenty, Maggie knocked lightly and entered with her laptop. “I found something.”
Annie sat up.
Maggie set the laptop on the desk and turned it toward her. “Dr. Lane’s maiden name is Halpert. Beatrice Halpert Lane.”
Annie’s stomach tightened.
“Brooke’s father has a sister named Margaret Halpert Lane,” Maggie continued. “Margaret has a daughter named Beatrice. So yes. Cousins.”
“Publicly available?”
“All of it.”
Annie nodded. “What else?”
Maggie clicked to another tab. “Dr. Lane is listed as a consultant for something called The Halpert Family Resilience Fund. It’s a private donor initiative.”
Annie leaned closer. “And Brooke is on the board?” she asked.
“Brooke founded it.”
Annie closed her eyes briefly. Of course she had.
Maggie hesitated. “There’s more.”
Annie opened her eyes.
Maggie pulled up a PDF from the fund’s website. A glossy annual report. Photographs of donor dinners, smiling committees, tasteful blue graphics. Maggie scrolled to an acknowledgments page.
“There,” she said.
Annie read the line twice.
Grisham Meridian is honored for its generous founding support.
Nathan’s company.
Not Nathan personally. His company. The company Brooke had helped launch in its earliest years. The company whose charitable giving Annie had never reviewed because Nathan’s foundation work was “Brooke’s lane.”
Annie felt something in her go very quiet.
Brooke had not merely referred her to a cousin. She had sent Annie to a therapist financially and socially connected to Brooke, Nathan, and Nathan’s company.
Then she had used the therapist’s language to coach Nathan through separating from his wife.
Annie reached for her phone and took screenshots of everything.
Maggie watched her. “Do you need me to keep digging?”
“Yes,” Annie said. “But carefully.”
“What am I looking for?”
Annie looked at the screen, at Beatrice Lane’s polished headshot beside Brooke’s foundation logo.
“Divorce,” she said.
Maggie frowned. “Divorce?”
“Any mediator, attorney, consultant, coach, retreat, counselor, anything connected to Brooke or Dr. Lane that markets itself around marital separation.”
Maggie’s face changed. “You think this is bigger.”
“I think Brooke has been handing Nathan a road map and calling it concern.”
Her phone buzzed again.
Nathan. Please answer me. I told Brooke we need distance.
Annie’s hand froze above the screen.
A second message arrived. She didn’t take it well.
Then a third. She’s coming by the house tonight. I told her not to.
Annie stood so quickly her chair struck the credenza behind her.
Maggie rose too. “What happened?”
Annie was already reaching for her bag. “Brooke is going to my house.”
“Do you want me to call someone?”
“No.” Annie stopped at the doorway, turned back, and looked at the laptop still open on her desk. “Send me everything,” she said. “And Maggie?”
“Yes?”
“If I call you tonight, record the call.”
Maggie’s eyes widened slightly, then she nodded.
Annie left the office with her coat over one arm and her heart beating so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
In the cab home, Nathan called three times. She did not answer because she did not trust herself to speak without wasting all her fear on him. She watched the city pass in fragments: wet sidewalks, black umbrellas, a woman laughing into a phone beneath a red awning.
Her own phone kept buzzing. Nathan again. Then Brooke. Annie stared at Brooke’s name and let it ring. The voicemail came through seconds later. For a moment, Annie did not move. Then she lifted the phone to her ear.
Brooke’s voice was different this time. The softness was gone. So was the performance. “You need to stop digging,” Brooke said. “You have no idea what you’re risking for him.”
The message ended. Annie lowered the phone slowly. The cab turned onto their street.
Brooke’s car was already in the driveway.