CHAPTER SEVEN: ELAINE PORTER
Elaine Porter contacted me on Wednesday morning.
She introduced herself by full name and said Miriam Shaw had given her my number with permission.
Her tone was practical rather than dramatic.
“I understand you may have seen Richard Lawson behave in a way relevant to an ongoing complaint,” she said.
“I have,” I replied.
“I also understand his wife believes he is holding documents over her.”
I confirmed only what Jessica had told me directly.
Elaine invited me to speak with her attorney, but I told her I needed to consult my own counsel first.
She accepted the answer without argument.
Before ending the call, she told me something that stayed with me.
“When I left the company, Richard told everyone I couldn’t handle the pressure,”
she said.
“I had worked there for eleven years and had never missed a filing deadline.”
I asked why she had finally decided to challenge him.
“Because he put another employee’s signature on a report she never approved,” Elaine said.
“And I realized I wouldn’t be the last.”
That afternoon, my attorney Paul Brennan listened to everything I could document.
He explained that the divorce and the workplace allegations were separate matters, even if Richard’s behavior linked them emotionally.
I asked whether I should speak publicly about the affair.
Paul shook his head.
“Your job isn’t to win an audience,” he said.
“Your job is to protect your position and tell the truth in the appropriate setting.”
I asked whether Jessica’s possible involvement in false reports could affect our finances.
“It might create financial questions,” he replied.
“But we won’t presume liability based on accusations.”
He recommended preserving statements and communications and using counsel for any contested exchange.
I left his office feeling less powerful than I had expected.
There was no dramatic maneuver that would erase what Jessica had done.
There was only a series of decisions that could keep her choices from destroying the rest of my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BOARD MEETING
By Thursday, Lawson Development’s directors had called an emergency meeting.
I knew because Jessica sent me a message just after noon.
Richard has been suspended pending a review.
I read the sentence three times.
Then another message arrived.
He says you caused this.
I typed a reply and deleted it.
I finally wrote that I had not contacted the board and had only spoken with people who approached me.
Jessica called immediately.
“Richard says Caroline is feeding people lies,” she said.
“Then the investigation should test the claims,” I answered.
“He says I have to stand beside him.”
“You don’t have to make a public declaration before consulting your lawyer.”
“He says my career is finished if I abandon him.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
“Jessica, listen to the actual words you’re repeating.”
She began to cry.
“I know.”
“No one who cares about your future should threaten to destroy it because you ask for independent advice.”
She was quiet for several seconds.
Then she told me she had found a copy of an investor presentation she had prepared six months earlier.
“The last page had numbers that weren’t in the version finance sent me,” she said.
I asked whether she knew who changed them.
“I assumed Richard did,” she answered.
“Did you approve the final version?”
“My name is on it.”
“That isn’t the same question.”
“I don’t remember seeing the final version before it went out.”
I told her to give the document to her lawyer and avoid changing it.
For the first time, she did not ask what Richard would think.
“Okay,” she said.
After we hung up, I went outside and mowed the lawn.
The grass needed cutting, and no amount of scandal would change that.
I had spent the last six days feeling as though our house had become a crime scene in a story someone else was writing.
The ordinary work of pushing a mower gave me half an hour in which nothing required an explanation.
When I finished, Nora was standing beside her car in the driveway.
She had brought groceries and a container of soup.
“I figured you might be living on coffee,” she said.
I took the bags from her.
“I was also eating crackers,” I admitted.
She looked at the lawn.
“That’s a very neat job for a man whose life just exploded.”
I laughed for the first time since Friday.
Then I started crying again, and Nora stayed until I could breathe normally.
