Chapter 6 - The Doorbell
My legs were shaking by the time we hit the elevator.
"That was completely insane," I said.
"I know."
"I honestly thought you were going to pour that bottle on her."
"I'd never sink to her level." A beat. "But I needed her to feel it in her stomach the second she saw the bottle."
By the time the doors opened in the lobby we were both doing that thing that's half laughing and half crying, holding onto each other's arms in a corporate elevator like two people who'd just done something they couldn't take back.
We heard the rest from Warren.
Diane tried to push through with the presentation. It fell apart. Two of the Meridian people stepped out before she was halfway done and didn't come back. The senior man leading their team went to Paula afterward and told her, plainly, that he'd just watched a director flatly deny something and then get shown video of it, and he had real questions about her judgment and whether he could trust anything she told him.
Meridian signed with a different firm.
Diane didn't get fired. That mattered to me — I never wanted her out of a job. But Paula pulled her off client-facing work while the company "reviewed things," and the promotion to team lead that Diane had been circling all year quietly went to someone else.
At the office, people stopped pretending nothing had happened. More than one coworker told her flat out that she owed me an apology.
For almost two weeks, she wouldn't.
Then one Sunday afternoon the doorbell rang, and there she was on the step, no sharp little smile, hands folded in front of her like a kid outside the principal's office.
Grant opened the door and left it half closed. "What do you want?"
She looked past him at me. "I came to apologize."
I folded my arms and waited.
She swallowed. "I poured the wine on purpose."
Grant said nothing.
Her eyes filled. "I was angry. I felt like I was losing my son, and I know that's not an excuse."
"It isn't," I said.
"I told myself you were taking him from me."
"He's your son. I'm his wife. Those aren't the same seat, and I was never trying to take yours."
"I know that. I was being irrational." She looked at Grant. "I wanted to make you choose. And when it felt like you didn't choose me, I took it out on her." She turned back to me. "I embarrassed you because I wanted you to feel small in front of everyone, on the one day it was all about you."
That landed harder than I expected. But it was the truth, finally, said out loud on my porch.
"I'm sorry, Claire."
I didn't answer right away. Then: "I forgive you."
She blinked, like she'd braced for something else.
"But forgiving you doesn't mean it goes back to how it was. You don't get that automatically. You earn it."
"I'll work at it," she said. "Hard."
May you like
Grant stepped up beside me. "And if you ever treat her like that again, we're done. For good."
Diane nodded.
