Nights With Him(108)
He held up his hands, knowing he’d been caught. “Michelle, you’ve worked so hard for your career, and I hate that this guy’s support of a political campaign is killing you.”
She scoffed. “I know. But I don’t even care anymore.”
“That’s not true. You do care. You care about everything.”
She shot him a rueful smile. “And look where it got me. Everything I’ve worked for is going down the drain.”
“You’ll reinvent yourself,” he said, grasping her hand, changing tactics. He had to. His annoyance with Jack wasn’t helping. He’d have to let it go. “And I’ll be here every step of the way.”
“I know. I just want to go away. Maybe I should take the job in Paris,” she said in an offhand voice.
Davis straightened his spine. “You were offered a job in Paris?”
“Sort of. Well, almost. After my keynote, Julien introduced me to one of his colleagues, Denis. I talked to Denis for a while. He was impressed with my findings, and he emailed me yesterday to say he wants to talk more to see if I’d be interested in working with him. It was one of the many emails I received when I landed. I haven’t had a chance to respond yet. I had a lot going on,” she said sarcastically, and the fact that she’d recovered even a modicum of humor gave him a sliver of hope that she’d be okay.
“Do you want to talk more to Denis?” he asked gently.
She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m sure he hasn’t seen the reports yet, and when he does, he won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole either. You might as well just tell Jack that his Plan B is fine. I’m going to take a shower. I have to see the ethics board in an hour. Why don’t you look at the email and tell me what Denis said? I can’t bear any more bad news.”
When he heard the shower running, Davis scrolled through his sister’s work phone. It was the safe phone, as he’d started calling it. Her personal phone was the one that had been hacked. They’d been able to figure that much out since only details from her personal email had been revealed in the story, and she hadn’t been emailing Jack while they were in Paris, so at least their time there was untouched, she’d said. She’d smashed her personal phone with a hammer last night.
He’d reset her work phone for her this morning, so they knew that one was clean.
He thumbed through her notes, looking for the one from Denis and read it quickly.
* * *
Michelle didn’t think she could take another surprise hit. When she saw Jennifer from her consulting group leave the office of the ethics board on the Upper West Side building, she asked her directly, “What were you doing there?”
Jennifer held up her chin, and flashed a small smile. “I went in on my own. I wanted to tell them how much I admire you. How I know everything being said is wrong. That you’re the victim, here, of a smear attack that has nothing to do with you.”
A tear of gratitude threatened to escape. “You did that for me?”
The young therapist nodded. “I did. I don’t need to know the details. I don’t believe the stories.”
“Thank you,” Michelle said, truly touched. She didn’t even know Jennifer that well, which made the effort all the more meaningful.
Jennifer leaned closer and whispered. “I bet it was that client you mentioned who was checking you out. Probably a psycho.”
“Probably,” Michelle said, then walked through a green door and into the office. She told her colleagues the same story she told Carla, that she told Kana, that she told anyone who’d asked. “He was never my patient.”
It was the whole, entire truth, and it was all she had to go on. Kana had been there too, they said. Kana had explained that Michelle had referred Jack to her that very first day. More evidence, but she feared it would never be enough.
When she left, she checked her voicemail, and found more cancellations. She was hemorrhaging faster than a slashed artery. Sometimes the truth wasn’t enough to change the reality.
* * *
Jack knocked on the green door. A graying man who looked like a professor invited him in. He was with a woman who had her hair pulled into a tight bun, and another man, who looked to be middle-aged. They were in charge of Michelle’s professional fate. They held the power to take her license away.
The graying man went first. “Take a seat.”
Jack sat on a hard brown chair. “I know you didn’t call me, but I needed to be here.”
“We are glad you found us. We treat all these situations seriously. Let’s start at the beginning.”
“She refused to treat me. It’s that simple. Everything else is a lie. Everything is spin. It’s the press trying to make it look a certain way.”