Chapter 7 - What the Stain Taught Me
That was three months ago.
Diane still works at Brandt & Ellis, still rebuilding what she broke there. Meridian went with the other agency. She lost the leadership role she'd expected this year. As far as I'm concerned, every bit of that is a bill she wrote herself.
My dress got professionally cleaned. If you know where to look, there's a faint shadow near the waist. I used to think that mark would haunt me. It doesn't. Our wedding photos are still beautiful, and when I look at them now I don't think about Diane or the wine.
I think about Grant in that hallway, holding my face in both hands, saying, "Trust me."
And I think about this: the worst part of what Diane did was never the dress. It was that she believed she could humiliate me and her son would keep his mouth shut, because she was his mother.
She was wrong about that.
May you like
Forgiving someone after they finally apologize is hard, but it's lighter than carrying it. Trust takes a lot longer to put back together. And being someone's family has never once meant they get to treat you however they want.
If you were me, would you have stood behind Grant walking into that conference room — or would you have said the workplace was a line too far, even after what she did at the wedding?
