Whisper Network Read online

  “Want to switch places with me?” Grace asked. “I’ll gladly take over your hotel room and you can stay with my husband while you try to negotiate a treaty between my daughter and bedtime. Sloane mentioned you’re a bit of an expert.” Grace hoped that she didn’t come across as trying too hard. Compliments could be tricky too early in a relationship and it was no different with friendship.

  “At negotiation, maybe,” Katherine said. “At children, definitely not. Children and I don’t get along, actually.”

  Grace looked out again, distractedly, to where the real world was waiting. She already felt the tightness forming in her chest.

  “Well,” she said after a short pause. “We should probably get going. Sloane may have already reported me missing by now. A few more minutes and she’ll have called out the National Guard.”

  Katherine reached into her purse and pulled out a pink valet ticket. “We can’t have that,” she said. “That would blow your cover.”

  “My cover?” Grace twisted the clasp of her necklace around to sit on the knots of bone at the back of her neck.

  “With your husband?” Katherine wrinkled her nose like a bunny’s. It was a decidedly cute expression for a woman in her thirties. “You told him you were at work.”

  Grace pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “God, you’re right.”

  There was an edge of laughter in both their voices now. Grace felt a small spark. As though her cord had finally reached an outlet that had been too far away. She was already looking forward to asking Katherine out for a glass of wine or to go shopping in Highland Park Village. This was why she’d always been a girl’s girl—she was good at it. It occurred to her, in a moment of clarity, that maybe what she’d been looking for wasn’t to connect with other mothers at all.

  Katherine led them out to the valet stand. The breeze was unseasonably warm for February. The smell of grease foreshadowed client lunches, which always took place at a civilized eleven-thirty in the morning. A gunmetal Jaguar idled in the porte cochere. An unspoken advertisement for the hotel.

  As the two young men sprinted off in the direction of the parking lot, Katherine folded her arms and looked out at the street. “You’ve been at Truviv a while?”

  Grace hunted absently for her car keys before realizing they were with the valet. “Six years.”

  “So, is everyone always this nice?”

  Grace laughed. “For the most part, yes. It’s a good group.” Southern people were almost competitively nice and Grace and her family were considered top-flight. “Not so much at your old job?”

  Katherine looked, for a moment, like she didn’t know how to answer the question. “It’s not that, exactly. Just looking for a fresh start.” She began to say something else, but the valet pulled up in Grace’s car with a screech. Both women jumped back, Grace’s arm stretching protectively out in front of Katherine’s chest.

  “Sorry.” Grace’s cheeks pinked. The reaction had clearly been that of a carpooling mother and she’d managed to treat Katherine—Harvard Law Katherine—as a child incapable of looking both ways before crossing the road.

  “It’s fine,” Katherine said, smoothing her dress. “If you’d been a colleague at my old job, you’d have pushed.”

  And Grace laughed because the idea was ridiculous. Of course.

  SUBPOENA DOCUMENT

  21-January

  Ms. Katherine Bell

  2337 Windsor Street

  Boston, MA 02101

  Ms. Bell:

  Your employment with Frost Klein & Roget (“Frost Klein”) will officially be terminated as of today’s date.

  You are hereby notified that you have been terminated for cause.

  You will not receive payment for the remaining balance of leave pay you have accumulated. Your health care benefits will remain in effect for 0 days.

  Please review the nondisclosure agreement you signed upon hiring. According to this agreement, you are not to disclose any firm trade secrets, practices, or methods of operation. Frost Klein is entitled to take legal action if it is revealed that you discussed trade secrets during or after employment.

  Sincerely,

  Alan Ziegler

  Managing Partner

  Frost Klein & Roget

  CHAPTER NINE

  23-MAR

  No productive day began with a morning appointment outside of the office. Sloane knew this. She had made peace with it.

  Or at least she thought she had, before she’d begun watching the unread emails stack up in her inbox, reproducing like fruit flies. That her day would be trashed was already a foregone conclusion and it wasn’t even eleven A.M. yet. Probably some kind of record.

  From where she sat, the school office smelled of cheese. The chairs were too small and too square and it was impossible not to get the sense that droves of crumbs lurked in the carpeting. A horseshoe linoleum counter separated the waiting area from the office staff, who were very busy stapling and ignoring ringing telephones.

  Sloane sat with her purse squashed in her lap, already feeling chastened. “Remember, Abigail,” she told her daughter, who was poking at her smartphone. “You don’t have to say anything. If you have a question, whisper it to me or Ms. Ardie.” This would be the first meeting with Abigail actually in attendance and, while it was one thing to take up Sloane’s time, it was quite another that her daughter should be expected to spend hers.

  Abigail peered around her mother to look at Ardie. “Mom says I can tell you anything and you can’t tell, not even to her, because you’re my lawyer.”

  “I didn’t say exactly that.”

  Abigail was a perfectly normal looking ten-year-old girl: crooked teeth, pink popsicle lips, and a smattering of freckles on her nose that Sloane guessed from experience would fade during college. She was kicking her shoes out with nervous energy. They were new Converses, ungodly expensive for a ten-year-old’s sneakers, and they might as well have been included on the mandatory school supply list, right next to “composition notebook” and “Lilly Pulitzer thermos.” When she was on a tear, Sloane swore to Derek that they were going to flee the Park Cities and escape to the countryside. But then there was the matter of the mortgage—secured, thanks to Sloane, at a competitive rate—and her job, three cell phone plans, car payments, and, then, Derek and Sloane truly did love the steelhead trout at Fearing’s … so she supposed that Converses weren’t such a big deal, really.

  “That’s exactly right, Abigail.” Ardie ignored Sloane. “I’m sure we can think of lots of secrets to share.”

  “Like how Mom and Dad have secrets that they can’t tell me!” Abigail’s shoes kicked harder. “Only we’ll be the ones who can’t tell.”

  Ardie grinned and sat back. “I’m going to need some follow-up on those. Sounds juicy.”

  “Only if you’re interested in where Mom and Dad hide the vodka.” Sloane extracted lipstick from her purse and applied it without using a mirror. “How do I look?” She turned to Ardie and puckered her lips. Recently, Sloane noticed she had to keep her lipstick fresh, or the color seeped out into the tiny wrinkles starting to form around her lips.

  Ardie, who wore almost no makeup and didn’t even dye the grays in her hair, gave her best not-impressed face. One of her signatures. “You do know we’re at your daughter’s school, right? I think Judge Judy took the day off.”

  Sloane cocked her head. “I don’t usually tolerate this sort of attitude from outside counsel, you know.”

  She was joking, but not convincingly. This thing with Abigail was a serious matter and Sloane was taking it seriously. Deadly seriously.

  At their first meeting with the principal, they’d learned Abigail wasn’t the only recipient of the messages. The girls in her class were experimenting with new words, apparently. That was small consolation for Sloane. Other girls may have been able to handle that brand of twenty-first-century playground cruelty, but her sensitive Abigail? “Eggshell skull syndrome,” her torts professor had called it i
n law school. The idea that if you struck a person in the head and it broke their skull, it didn’t matter that the same blow wouldn’t have cracked most other people’s skulls. The injured person’s unexpected frailty wasn’t a valid defense to the seriousness of any injury caused to them. Abigail had the eggshell skull.

  Today was the follow-up, and when Derek found out he couldn’t be here—a conflict with the middle school’s state testing—he suggested the perfect solution: “Bring Ardie.” Ardie was so much steadier than Sloane, she agreed. Like how Ardie wore the perfume of a much older woman, dried roses and spice, while Sloane had a vague self-awareness that she sometimes gave off an unintended air of frivolity, down to the carelessly chosen sample-sized perfume choices that she cycled through every day of the week.

  The door to their left swung open.

  “Sloane Glover? The principal’s ready for you.”

  Sloane stood up so quickly she felt dizzy.

  “Easy,” Ardie murmured beside her.

  Sloane took a deep, steadying breath and the three of them filed into a small, gray office that overlooked the playground.

  Sloane spoke first. She nearly always did. “Principal Clark,” she said. “This is our attorney, Ardie Valdez.”

  Principal Clark stood, adjusted his tie, and extended a hand to Ardie. He was black and tall, purposefully bald, but with strands of white flecking his trimmed beard. Sloane found herself inexplicably checking his ring finger: unoccupied. He’d be such a cute match for Ardie. If Sloane weren’t so angry with him and threatening to sue, of course.

  “I’m sure her presence isn’t necessary,” Clark said. “This is only an opportunity for us to meet to discuss Abigail’s progress.”

  They all stared at Abigail, whose ankles were crossed under her chair. She looked nervous and uncomfortable, like a cat doused in water.

  Ardie pulled up a seat. “And the school’s progress. We can’t forget that part.”

  Sloane beamed. Point for Ardie right at the start of the match. Not that Sloane was competitive.

  “Correct.” He cleared his throat and stared down at a stack of papers on his desk. Sloane herself sometimes used the same stalling tactic. Stare down, shuffle, shuffle, and, ah, here we are, finally let’s begin. “I’ll start, then,” he said. “The school has recently sent out flyers targeted at both parents and students to discuss the parameters on students’ expected social media conduct. Parents are being asked to monitor accounts and maintain passwords.”

  A legal pad had appeared on Ardie’s lap. “And what about enforcement?”

  He nodded as though he’d been about to get there. “For the older students, misconduct on social media will result in suspension of social activity privileges, such as dances or basketball games.”

  “But Abigail isn’t one of the older students,” Sloane butted in. “She’s in fourth grade. She doesn’t even have social media.”

  “I have YouTube,” Abigail added, giving a decisive and adult-like nod to Principal Clark.

  “That’s different, sweetie,” Sloane said automatically. And then found herself thinking: Was it? She should check Abigail’s account. Review what she’d been watching. She wished she, too, had brought a legal pad. That had been sloppy of her.

  Principal Clark ignored Abigail. “Right. I do realize that. To that end, have you considered changing Abigail’s phone number?”

  Sloane let out a contemptuous guffaw. “That’s your answer? Why should the onus be on her? On us? What happens when those kids get her new number? They shouldn’t even have phones.”

  “There’s a safety consideration there. Parents these days feel safer if their children have phones on them.”

  Sloane didn’t think she’d mind if one of those punk kids got kidnapped once or twice.

  Behind Principal Clark, kids ran with lunch boxes and aluminum water bottles and scaled the monkey bars. “Has anything new happened, Abigail?” he asked.

  Abigail stuffed her hands underneath her thighs, swaying back and forth. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said, her voice small and guileless. “A couple boys. They asked me to go behind the gym to get their shoes. I went, but, I guess there were no shoes.” She shrugged. Her eyes were wide and blue. “I came back, but they were all laughing at me. I didn’t get the joke. I screamed at them to go away in my loudest voice like Mom taught me. Then they said I was crazy.”

  Sloane closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Sometimes when she and Abigail were leaving Target or a movie theater together and the parking lot was mostly empty, she made Abigail practice her screaming. Derek thought the exercise would only scare her. But what did he know? Derek had never been a girl. Sloane had, and if their daughter were ever in danger, Abigail knew exactly what to do: scream bloody murder.

  And now here they were.

  “I don’t get it,” Sloane said. “Shoes? Why are kids laughing at my daughter about shoes?”

  Principal Clark seemed to be hiding—what?—a smile behind his clasped fists, his elbows propped casually on his desk.

  “Is something amusing here, Principal Clark? What are we missing?” Ardie scooted to the edge of her seat, pen poised.

  He unlocked his fingers and shrugged. “Kids,” he said. “It’s silly, really.” His eyes darted between Ardie and Sloane. They waited.

  “Sloane and I love silly.”

  Clark scratched the back of his neck. “It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s this thing the boys have been doing. It’s like flirting. It means they think you’re pretty. A ritual they have, I guess you could call it. They ask the girl they think is pretty to go back behind the gym and then, well, nothing. They’re children.” He pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows to Abigail.

  “I’m sorry, what now?” Sloane felt herself doing the exaggerated blinky thing that Derek hated so much. But she only did it when she was right. And when the person to whom she was speaking was stupidly wrong. “You’re telling me my daughter has been subject to some tween hazing thing?”

  Ardie’s stare, too, had hardened into judgmental curiosity. (Because we knew this logic: we were always supposed to be thankful when anyone thought we were pretty.)

  Their eyes met—Sloane’s and Ardie’s. What more than a decade of shared work experience bought you was the same bullshit meter. Ardie’s movement was so subtle. A nearly imperceptible flash of her eyes, followed by the slightest tilt of her head. I’m sure as hell not going to stop you, it said.

  “Humiliating her,” Sloane said to Principal Clark. “That’s a compliment? All in good fun, I suppose.”

  “Mom.” Abigail bounced in her seat.

  “I understand what you’re thinking. But I assure you, it’s harmless.”

  “Oh! Oh! You assure me?” Sloane’s face went white with anger.

  Ardie was steady beside her. She leaned forward. “I think part of what my clients are responding to is the fact that these boys purposefully embarrassed Abigail. They then called her crazy. Do you know why that’s problematic, Principal Clark?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s problematic because when we allow young boys to so casually call a young girl ‘crazy,’ well, it offers everyone else permission not to believe her. Were any of these boys called crazy for inventing this made-up story about shoes, of all things?”

  Principal Clark’s residue of a smile disappeared.

  Ardie continued. “I didn’t think so. What makes it more problematic is that the administration here seems to think that all of this behavior—the boys, the girls—is cute. When really what it seems to be doing is fostering a dangerous behavior. It’s not cute, Principal Clark. And my client, here, is legitimately concerned about the safety and well-being of her child.”

  “I understand that,” Principal Clark said, his face now grave.

  Sloane managed to find her voice and her purse at the same moment. She stood. “I agreed with the school board to do these meetings in hopes real progress would be made, and no further legal action required.” She he
ld her hand out to her side and Abigail slid off her chair and took it. “But this meeting was a complete waste of my time. Let’s hope you take the next one more seriously.”

  On cue, Ardie, Abigail, and Sloane left Principal Clark’s office without looking back. Sloane felt the vein in her forehead pulsating.

  “Mom.” Abigail tugged on her arm when they were outside in the hazy sunlight. “You yelled at Principal Clark.”

  “I didn’t yell at him.” They were now on the elementary school’s bright concrete sidewalks leading out to the visitor parking. Distant shrieks pierced the air, which smelled damp with humidity and sweaty children. “I spoke up. There’s a difference.”

  It was possible Sloane had been closer to yelling. The fog of self-righteousness could be a powerful drug. She would tell Derek she’d been very stoic and let Ardie do most of the heavy lifting. Ardie had been amazing, that much couldn’t be argued with.

  “So…” Sloane turned to Abigail and Ardie. “Can we treat you to lunch?”

  “Actually”—Ardie squinted against the light reflected off the pavement—“I’m just going to Uber back to the office. I’ve got to finish those reports and it’s my day for pickup again.” She was already pulling up the app on her phone.

  Sloane’s shoulders drooped. “Fine,” she conceded. “But only under protest. Let the record show that I attempted to pay you with the best meal between five and”—she thumbed through the crumpled bills in her wallet—“fifteen dollars could offer.” She pulled Ardie into a hug. “If you wouldn’t mind, though, I’d like to keep this thing with Abigail between us. It’s delicate,” she said, with a slight twinge of stress. The deposit of another secret into her and Ardie’s friendship account. Another blending of their work and personal lives. She watched her daughter study a nearby plant and pluck two tiny buds from between its leaves. She loved her daughter so much, but she had, in her heart, imagined that she would have more friends. Was that an awful thing to think? Was Sloane a terrible mother? “And, you know, company policy and whatnot, it could get—you quote-unquote representing us—well, it could get a little muddy.” Strictly speaking, Truviv lawyers weren’t meant to represent anyone other than Truviv. It was, if they were going to be sticklers about it, a violation of the company’s malpractice insurance policy and it could, technically, open up a whole host of issues. Though, of course, it wouldn’t. A silly rule. Like jaywalking. “You understand, right?”