“Very well. Good evening.”
Shay watched as Doris moved on toward her own car. She was sweating. Her blouse beneath her jacket was sticking to her back. Her face was damp and her hands were slippery on the wheel. Yet in her core, she felt ice-cold.
She had not gone back to that school. But word always got around. Another school, another revelation. When she begged to leave, her mother lost it. For the first time in two years she had a really good job paying wages that put a decent roof over their heads. She had sacrificed so much. No, everything for her daughter. Shay would just have to find a way to live with what she’d done, to both of them.
After that, the crack that had been there between mother and daughter since the night of the stabbing widened a little more each day.
At eighteen Shay moved out and changed her name legally to one that she hoped would allow her, and her mother, to outrun the past.
Only she hadn’t. The past was still ruling her life.
Shay leaned her forehead against the wheel. The joy of the morning had dried up and blown away. She wanted back that rare and precious feeling of happiness in the worst way. The impulse to reach for her phone and call James was strong. He’d given her his number in case of emergency. Didn’t this qualify?
Her reach stuttered to a stop just short of her purse. James was new in her life. This might be the one thing too many, even for him. Or perhaps he would come back to Raleigh and confront Eric. He was a police officer. If he assaulted a civilian he’d be in more trouble than the average person. It could ruin his career, his life.
Shay felt the familiar glowing coals of rage kindle to life inside her. It wasn’t a new feeling. Yet this time the fury felt more focused. She wasn’t a helpless fourteen-year-old. She’d come through that, and a lot more since. She knew exactly who her enemy was, and why.
She’d let Eric’s rat-bastard bullying and abuse go on for too long. She’d told him it was over but he refused to accept that.
Eric had made it clear he thought he was calling the shots. The phone calls, now the damage to her car. He was playing mind games with her. And it was escalating. Only a fool would think he would stop now.
But this time she wasn’t going to ask for help. She wasn’t going to be the cause of any more destroyed lives, except maybe her own. She just needed to think through the plan forming in her mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Shay let out a long breath as the elevator doors closed on the top floor of Halifax Bank. She had just lit a match to her reputation, and possibly her job future. Shay smiled at her metallic reflection in the doors. It felt glorious.
She’d been waiting in his outer office when. Cadwallader Jones, president of the bank, arrived this morning. She had expected to wait hours to see him but he ushered her right in.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Appleton?”
Shay lifted her chin, her cheeks burning as she made eye contact with the man into whose hands she was about to place her future. “I’m here to report systemic sexual harassment by one of your employees. And, I suspect, misuse of Halifax Bank funds.”
Cadwallader Jones blinked behind his glasses. “You should take a seat, Ms. Appleton. Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
Shay hesitated only a second. She was about to tell the truth. It couldn’t hurt her more than the lies Eric meant to spread.
He called in his secretary.
In the beginning, Cadwallader Jones listened to her with a neutral expression, neither commenting nor reacting. But she noticed a slight tightening of his mouth as she told him about Eric courting her a year ago. There was a banking policy against interpersonal relations between upper management and employees who reported to them. The story of their illicit trip to the Caymans on the company’s dime briefly widened his eyes. As she ticked off their other travels, financed by the bank or bank customers, his eyes narrowed to slits. Then she moved on to the sexual harassment charge.
She stopped far short of her explicit confession to James, but offered some telling details of Eric’s harassment that finally led her to call the police the night of their breakup. She told him of Eric’s refusal to accept their breakup, including his attempts to bring her back into his control by finagling a job here at the bank a second time.
As she talked, she glimpsed a sheen of sweat rising beneath the pale strands of Cadwallader Jones’s thinning hair.
By the time she finished with Eric’s attempt to rape her in the conference room down the hall the day before, the secretary was no longer taking notes but simply staring at her. Finally, she reported the threats Eric had made against her employer if she told anyone about his actions yesterday.
When she was done, Cadwallader Jones steepled his fingers, elbows locked by his sides, and asked her three questions.