“No. Please. Not like that.”
I almost hung up.
Then she said, “They lied to me too.”
The garden seemed to still around me.
“Who did?”
“Elias and Cynthia.”
I looked toward the house. Through the kitchen window, I could see Rebecca on a call, pacing with her notebook in hand.
“Brenda,” I said slowly, “this is not a conversation you should be having with me.”
“I know. I know that. But I didn’t know about the apartment plan.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“You were on speaker.”
“I know what you heard.”
My breath caught.
Silence stretched.
“So Elias told you.”
“No.” Her voice trembled. “Cynthia did. She said you recorded them. She’s furious. She said you were hiding under the bed like some kind of lunatic.”
My pulse moved into my throat.
Cynthia knew.
“How?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
But she did. I heard it in the way her voice thinned.
“Brenda.”
A shaky exhale. “Elias found something in the hotel suite. A bead from your dress, maybe. I don’t know. Cynthia started putting it together after you vanished.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
No secret stayed perfect forever.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want you to know I’m not part of everything.”
“You were part of enough.”
“I know.”
The admission disarmed me more than denial would have.
Brenda had always been polished, bright, a woman who knew how to enter a room as if applause might follow. But now she sounded young. Frightened. Cornered.
“Are you pregnant?” I asked.
Another pause.
“Yes.”
“Is Elias the father?”
“I thought he was.”
I opened my eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean I’m not sure anymore.”
That sentence sat between us like a door neither of us wanted to open.
Brenda spoke quickly. “I found messages. Cynthia has been pushing him to marry you for over a year. Not just because of the apartment. There’s something else. She kept saying your father owed their family.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“My father doesn’t know Cynthia.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
A chill moved through me despite the afternoon warmth.
“What exactly did you find?”
“Old emails. Not many. Elias deleted most things, but he’s bad at emptying archived folders. There was one from Cynthia to someone named Paul. It said, ‘Jonathan Wilson’s daughter is the cleanest way back in.’”
My hand went cold around the phone.
Paul.
I knew that name.
Not well. Not clearly. More like a shape from childhood, a voice in another room, my parents arguing after they thought I had gone to sleep.
Paul Mercer.
My mother’s younger brother.
My uncle.
A man who had vanished from our lives when I was twelve.
I had been told he moved overseas after a business disagreement with my father. My mother cried for weeks. My father never spoke his name again.
“Send me the email,” I said.
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Brenda.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
Her breath hitched.
For the first time since the wedding, I wondered whether Brenda had been less an enemy than another piece on Cynthia’s board. That did not make her innocent. It did not erase the recording. But fear has a texture, and hers did not feel performed.
“Meet me,” she whispered.
“No.”
“Please. Somewhere public. I’ll bring what I found.”
