Chapter 8 - The Mistress Who Started to Panic
Brooke Ellis was not the kind of woman who frightened easily.
She had negotiated hospital contracts, survived difficult board meetings, and built an impressive career by remaining composed when other people lost their tempers.
For three years she had used that composure to conceal her affair with Grant.
I knew none of it while it was happening.
After the fire, I learned the affair had begun during a strategic planning conference in Denver and had continued through business trips booked on Northstar accounts.
Hotel records, expense reports, and private messages later filled in the details.
Brooke initially treated the fire like another public relations disaster to manage.
She contacted reporters, reviewed sympathy statements, and made sure she remained at Grant's side whenever photographs were taken.
But her messages told a different story.
On the morning after the blaze, she wrote, “What if they find the chain?”
Grant replied, “They won't prove who put it there.”
Two hours later, she asked whether the local contractor had removed the things he was supposed to remove.
Grant answered only, “Stop texting about this.”
I would eventually see those exchanges in a prosecutor's evidence packet.
At the time, I knew only that Lena had begun interviewing everyone connected to the cabin and the proposed private-aircraft venture.
When she spoke to Brooke, Brooke claimed Grant had dropped her at a hotel before midnight and that she knew nothing about my plans.
The road-camera footage contradicted the timeline.
Lena did not confront her with every inconsistency at once.
She asked Brooke to confirm the hotel's name, the time, and the vehicle she had used.
Brooke repeated the story.
Then she asked whether she needed an attorney.
“You're free to consult one,” Lena said.
Brooke did.
That afternoon, the lawyer called the detective to ask about another interview.
I was not told the details of their discussions, and Lena rightly refused to speculate about whether Brooke might cooperate.
But something had changed.
The woman who had stood beside my husband while I screamed from a burning house no longer trusted him to protect her.
The clue arrived when Priya discovered a draft internal memo stored on Brooke's corporate account.
It attributed every irregular consulting invoice to Brooke's planning office.
The draft carried Grant's digital comments, including a request to emphasize that he had relied on her representations.
It was dated the day after the fire.
“He's setting her up,” I said.
Vivian looked at the document.
“He may be preparing to blame her for the financial misconduct.”
“That doesn't erase what she did to me.”
“No,” Vivian agreed.
“It doesn't.”
That evening, Brooke called my old office number, which forwarded unanswered messages to a secured administrative mailbox.
Her voice sounded strained.
“Stella, if you're receiving this, tell the board that any claim I authorized the Crescent Harbor payments alone is false.”
She paused.
“I have records that prove who directed the transactions.”
Then she disconnected.
Stella delivered the message to Vivian, who preserved it and gave relevant information to investigators.
When Lena explained that development, I felt no sympathy for Brooke.
I remembered her white coat in the porch light and the way she had hesitated before entering Grant's SUV.
She could have called for help.
She could have unfastened the chain.
She could have refused to leave.
Instead she had chosen herself.
Yet if fear of prosecution caused her to provide evidence, those choices might finally become useful to someone besides her.
Owen brought dinner to my room that night because he had noticed I was barely eating.
It was ordinary vegetable soup from the hospital cafeteria, served with crackers and a paper napkin.
I stared at the spoon without touching it.
“What's wrong?” he asked.
“Grant used to bring me soup when I was sick.”
Owen set the tray aside.
“Then we'll find something else.”
I hated that small kindness could make me cry.
For five years Grant had built memories around everyday acts of care.
He knew how I liked my tea.
He remembered which songs I played when nervous.
He could tell from my breathing when I was close to sleep.
The thought that he had used that intimate knowledge to plan a murder made every remembered tenderness feel dangerous.
Owen did not tell me to forget or forgive.
He simply sat with me while I cried.
When I was ready, he described the first mountain rescue he had ever joined.
A child had gone missing during a storm, and the team spent twenty hours searching before finding him alive in a drainage culvert.
Owen said the child's mother had held him so tightly that the boy protested he couldn't breathe.
“She told us she had spent the whole night bargaining with a God she wasn't sure existed,” he recalled.
“I understood her perfectly.”
I asked whether he had ever bargained like that over me.
“Every birthday,” he said.
“Even when I believed you were dead.”
I reached for his hand.
This time it felt less like holding a stranger's hand.
Near midnight, my attorney called with an update about the memorial.
Grant had booked the Grand Marquee Hall for a service on the fifth day after the fire.
He intended to invite Northstar's employees, investors, and local officials.
The announcement described me as a beloved wife and expectant mother, without clearly acknowledging that investigators had not identified any remains.
A casket had been ordered, but no funeral director had signed a document certifying that it contained my body.
“Can he do that?” I asked.
“A private memorial can be held without a body,” Vivian said.
“But he cannot honestly present it as an official determination of death.”
I looked at Noah sleeping beside a monitor.
“Then let him speak.”
Vivian was silent for a moment.
“What do you mean?”
“I want the world to hear what he says when he thinks I can't answer.”
“We can't control every risk that creates.”
“I know.”
“But I don't want anyone to be able to claim later that I misunderstood how publicly he exploited us.”
Vivian suggested we let the investigation team determine what use, if any, could be made of public statements from the memorial.
I agreed.
I was not interested in creating theatrical evidence that a defense lawyer could dismiss as a trap.
I wanted the truth recorded clearly, by the people whose job was to preserve it.
The next morning, a message arrived from Brooke's lawyer through the proper investigative channel.
Brooke wanted to discuss a possible formal interview.
There was one condition.
She wanted to know whether Grant had already told investigators she was responsible for the fire.
I heard the update from Lena and felt something cold settle into place.
The partnership that had nearly killed me was beginning to unravel.
May you like
Neither conspirator trusted the other.
And both were still certain that I was dead.
