Chapter 6 - The Promise I Made Too Soon
The first time I saw Cole after the attorney meeting, he was sitting alone on a bench outside the studio. He hadn't come upstairs or asked anyone to send for me. A cold wind had turned his face red.
"I told Dana I was here," he said when I approached.
"She told me I shouldn't meet you alone."
"Then don't. I'll go."
I should have walked back inside. Instead I sat at the opposite end of the bench. I was tired of hearing him through lawyers and emails, tired of wondering whether the man who knew the exact way I liked my coffee had ever learned to live with causing a stranger pain.
"Tell me one thing," I said. "When you read about us in the newspaper, why didn't you go to the hospital?"
Cole stared at the pavement. "Grant said any visit would be taken as an admission of liability. The family lawyer agreed. I told myself a stranger's hospital room wasn't the place to make myself feel less guilty."
"You could have told the police what happened."
"I know."
"You could have helped with bills without making it about you."
"I know."
"Then tell me why you didn't."
He covered his face for a moment. "Because I was afraid they'd take away everything I thought made me someone. My job, my father's respect, the company. I convinced myself the insurance process would take care of you."
I wanted him to say he had been young and helpless, that someone stronger had forced him to lie. But he was nearly thirty when the crash happened. He'd chosen each step.
"Give me Grant's letters," I said. "All of them."
"My lawyer is gathering what I can legally produce."
"Then do it now."
"I will."
"If you do, and if you tell the truth publicly, maybe someday we could talk about what happened between us."
He looked at me with a hope so sudden it made me afraid.
"Grace—"
"I didn't say we'd be together."
But the sentence had sounded like a promise. I realized it only later, when Dana asked exactly what I'd told him and frowned.
"You don't owe reconciliation as compensation for cooperation," she said. "And he must not believe your personal feelings are a condition attached to his evidence."
"I wanted him to stop being afraid."
"He has lawyers. He can be afraid and still do the right thing."
That evening I wrote Cole a brief message through counsel clarifying that my willingness to communicate about our personal relationship was separate from his duty to correct false statements. I asked for no reply. Yet the words stayed with me. I'd nearly put myself back in the position of managing his conscience, the same way I'd managed people's reactions to my scar for ten years.
At work the public overlook project was approaching a funding vote. The developer contributing a small share of the budget was a subsidiary of Cole's company. I disclosed the personal conflict to my director and recused myself from decisions concerning that grant. My colleagues would continue the design review without me. It hurt to step away from work I'd led, but the project belonged to the community, not to my pride.
Evelyn came over with takeout and listened while I explained the bench conversation.
"You loved him," she said. "That doesn't mean you owe him a future."
"I still do love some version of him."
"Then let that version be something you're grieving. Don't make it a bargain."
We ate noodles straight from cartons on the floor, the way we'd done when we first rented an apartment together after rehabilitation. The old friendship held, even when everything else moved.
At nine that night Dana forwarded a copy of a notice from the Bennett company's board. Cole had resigned from his executive position pending an independent review. Grant, the longtime operations director, was temporarily taking control of the company's public communications.
A statement accompanied the notice, accusing unnamed outside parties of attempting to pressure the company through "a long-resolved highway incident."
May you like
I read the phrase twice.
It was my life they had called long-resolved.
