Chapter 18 - The Email I Never Answered
The email was dated March 14, 2011.
Subject:
Concerns About Fitting Room Hours and Payment
A junior designer named Tessa Reed had written to her supervisor, human resources, and me.
She described unpaid late nights.
Weekend work.
A manager threatening to remove anyone from runway credits if they complained.
At the bottom, she wrote:
Mr. Laurent, I know you probably don’t see most of this. I’m asking you to look.
My inbox showed the message had been opened.
There was no reply.
Three days later, Tessa’s contract was terminated.
I stared at the screen.
“I don’t remember this.”
Grace sat across from me.
“That may be true.”
“Did I order her fired?”
“No evidence of that.”
“Did I forward the email?”
“No.”
“Did I discuss it?”
“Nothing we’ve found.”
I wanted innocence to emerge from those answers.
It did not.
She had asked me to look.
I had not.
“Who fired her?”
“Her department head. He died in 2019.”
I rubbed my face.
“Can we contact Tessa?”
“Through her attorney.”
Tessa was one of the plaintiffs.
Of course she was.
At Friday’s board meeting, Richard presented the email as proof that I had become an unsustainable legal risk.
He was not entirely wrong.
“I propose Gabriel take immediate leave pending resolution,” he said.
Priya looked at me.
“Do you oppose that?”
Every instinct in me screamed yes.
Then I remembered Tessa’s sentence.
I’m asking you to look.
Maybe leadership was not the right to remain standing simply because nobody could prove you pushed someone down.
“I will take leave as CEO,” I said.
Richard blinked.
Elena turned.
“For how long?” Priya asked.
“Until the independent committee decides my presence does not compromise the investigation.”
Richard recovered quickly.
“And creative control?”
“I retain my design title unless the board changes that separately. But I will not supervise personnel connected to claims.”
The vote passed unanimously.
Including mine.
When I left headquarters that afternoon, cameras waited outside.
Questions flew.
“Gabriel, did you knowingly retaliate?”
“Are you resigning?”
“Is Laurent collapsing?”
“Did your divorce trigger this crisis?”
That last question almost made me laugh.
Apparently Isabelle could be blamed for anything.
I stopped.
Security looked alarmed.
I faced the cameras.
“My former wife did not cause any of the matters under investigation. Do not use her name to explain decisions I made or failed to make.”
Then I walked away.
For the first time since I was twenty-seven, I had nowhere I was required to be the next morning.
The emptiness frightened me.
I called my therapist.
“I think I’m going to lose my mind.”
“That seems dramatic.”
“I’m unemployed.”
“You’re on leave.”
“Same sensation.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excellent.”
I hated him.
At eight Saturday morning, my doorbell rang.
Isabelle stood outside.
No warning.
No attorney.
No carefully limited café meeting.
She held two coffees.
I stared.
“I heard,” she said.
“Everyone heard.”
“I thought you might be unbearable alone.”
“I have been.”
She handed me a cup.
We sat in my kitchen.
Not the house we shared.
I had sold it six months earlier.
This apartment was smaller.
Still expensive.
But human-sized.
Isabelle looked around.
“You finally bought furniture that isn’t gray.”
“My sister helped.”
“That explains it.”
For an hour, we talked.
Not about the lawsuit at first.
About Claire.
About Mae.
About a student at Bell & Thread who had sewn a sleeve shut.
Then Isabelle said, “Do you remember Tessa Reed?”
I looked up.
“You knew her?”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“She complained to me once.”
I waited.
“I told her to talk to HR.”
“Did you know she emailed me?”
“No.”
“What happened after she was fired?”
Isabelle’s face filled with regret.
“I gave her two weeks’ pay from my personal account.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course she had.
“I thought I was helping.”
“You were.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I was helping the system stay quiet. I kept fixing individual emergencies because confronting you felt harder.”
I looked at her.
For years, my guilt had cast her as perfect.
She would not accept that role either.
“We both participated in things we should have challenged,” she said. “Not equally. You had more power. But I wasn’t powerless.”
The honesty between us changed something.
Not forgiveness.
Not romance.
Something sturdier.
Two adults refusing mythology.
When she stood to leave, I walked her to the door.
“Thank you for coming.”
She looked at me.
“I wanted to.”
Those three words followed me for the rest of the day.
Not I felt obligated.
Not I was worried you’d do something foolish.
I wanted to.
That night, for the first time since our divorce, I allowed myself to imagine a future with Isabelle.
Then I forced myself to imagine another future too.
May you like
One where she never returned.
I needed to be able to survive both.
