I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You warned me,” I whispered.
Of course, she didn’t answer.
But I remembered the week before she died, when she had taken my hand in the hospital and said, “Love should make your world larger, Ellie. Not smaller. If you find yourself shrinking to keep someone, run.”
Had I shrunk for Elias?
I thought about the clothes I stopped wearing because Cynthia said they looked “too polished” for their family gatherings. The promotions I downplayed because Elias became quiet whenever I mentioned work. The way I laughed off jokes about my apartment being “too nice” for a woman who supposedly answered phones for a living.
I had called it humility.
Maybe it had been hiding.
My phone buzzed.
This time it was an unknown number.
Rebecca had told me not to answer unknown numbers, but a text appeared before I could put the phone down.
It’s Brenda. Please. I’m outside the Wilson gate. I came alone.
My heart kicked once, hard.
I stood and crossed to the window, though the front gate was too far to see from my room.
Another text.
I know you recorded us. I know how it sounded. But Elias lied to me too.
For a long moment, I simply stared.
Then I took the phone downstairs.
My father’s response was immediate.
“No.”
Rebecca, who had returned after dinner with another folder of documents, was more measured.
“She came to the gate. That is either reckless, desperate, or strategic.”
“She can say anything through counsel,” my father said.
“She could,” Rebecca replied. “But if she is frightened, she may not trust formal channels.”
I looked between them. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
My father turned to me. “Ellie—”
“I won’t go alone. She doesn’t come inside the house. We meet in the east garden with security nearby. Rebecca stays with me.”
He studied my face, perhaps searching for the girl who used to ask permission.
But she wasn’t there.
After a long silence, he nodded.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “No more.”
Brenda was waiting beneath the garden pergola, wrapped in a tan coat over the emerald bridesmaid dress she had worn at my wedding. Her curls were pinned messily at the back of her head. Without makeup, she looked younger and more exhausted than I had ever seen her.
