Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN BEFORE ME
Lauren agreed to meet at a roadside diner three counties away.
She kept watching the windows.
Her collarbone had healed badly, leaving one shoulder lower than the other.
“I fell,” she said before I asked.
“Gregory said that?”
“I said it.”
“Why?”
Her hand tightened around her coffee.
“Because his father knew where my brother worked.”
She described the cabin without describing the attack. Gregory became angry. Victor waited outside. A family doctor arrived before police. By morning, Lauren had signed a settlement and property transfer.
“Three knocks meant what?” I asked.
Her face closed.
“I should not have come.”
“Did Victor hurt you?”
“Stop.”
“Did Gregory?”
“I said stop.”
I pushed again.
Military interviews had taught me that hesitation sometimes hid the most important fact.
They had also taught me not to mistake urgency for permission.
Lauren stood.
Her phone remained recording on the table.
Two days later, Gregory’s lawyers released a clip of me pressuring an “injured former partner” into accusing the Hartmans.
Lauren publicly denied abuse.
My defense consulting contract was suspended.
Naomi told me I had turned a frightened witness into evidence for the other side.
I apologized to Lauren through her attorney and made no further contact.
That evening, an envelope appeared beneath Naomi’s office door.
Inside was a photograph taken twenty-four years earlier.
Eleanor stood outside the same cabin with one arm in a sling.
Victor held her waist.
On the back, someone had written:
May you like
THE FIRST WOMAN DID NOT FALL EITHER.
The handwriting was Lauren’s.
