What I Should’ve Said

Norah

I take a right turn onto the gravel driveway that leads to Josie’s, and it’s not long before I’m parked and dragging my exhausted carcass into the house.

But as soon as I step through the door, I can tell something is off. The lights are still on in both the living room and the hallway, despite the late hour, and Josie’s bedroom door is visibly open at the end. I put my keys and phone down on the counter, realizing only then, of course, that I forgot to send her any more updates after I’d texted her that Summer had been safely transported to Burlington.

Hell, I haven’t even checked my phone in several hours. She must be worried sick.

“Josie? You awake?” I call out more quiet than loud to test the waters. Her answer comes from the living room.

“In here.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t update you or let you know I’d be this late,” I say as I walk out of the kitchen. “Summer is stable but admitted at Burlington. And God, Josie, it was so scar—” I stop midsentence when I find her on the sofa. But it’s not her presence that shocks me. It’s the manila envelope in her lap and the handwritten letter in her hands.

I hope the truth will set you free.

“I didn’t mean to,” she says in a quiet rush. “But I was trying to get some of these damn boxes unpacked so we can actually move around the house without tripping over shit, and I found this envelope and then I was just looking inside and I… Norah,” she whispers. “Is this…is this true?”

I don’t know what to say. All I know is that my heart is racing over the thought of my sister reading through the ugliness that’s inside that letter.

All I can manage is a nod. All of Alexis’s claims are backed up by other things—documents, a USB stick, and other forms of proof that came inside the envelope.

“This is awful.” She looks at me. Her eyes look soft, but it’s with sadness. A deep, disappointed sadness. “I always hoped that you got to see a different side of our mother. I always hoped that she was good to you. But this…”

She doesn’t even have to say it. In her eyes, this proves that Eleanor is Eleanor.

The corners of my mouth quiver as my lips slip down into a frown.

“She said you were always kind to her,” Josie comments, nodding down toward the letter. “Was she a friend of yours?”

“No, not really.” I shake my head. “To me, she was just a young girl from one of the many charities that Eleanor went to galas and events for. She had been in and out of foster care most of her life and had dealt with a lot of abusive situations throughout her childhood. I guess you could say our mother was mentoring her, and I got to know her a little because she worked for Thomas.”

“Wait…our mother mentors young girls?” Josie’s eyes make a bid for her forehead. “What does that even mean? I have a hard time believing Eleanor was doing shit like that out of the goodness of her own heart.”

“She would just help them. Buy them new wardrobes. Find them jobs.” I shrugged. “In Alexis’s case, she took her under her wing, helped her secure finances for college and get an internship at King Financial as Thomas’s assistant.”

My sister lets out an exasperated breath. Like she can’t believe our mother would do anything to benefit another human being.

“Jose, I don’t know,” I whisper, and nausea makes my mouth fill with too much saliva. I have to fight hard to swallow against it. “I feel like there’s something big I’m missing here. Like there’s more to this than just Alexis.”

Josie’s eyebrows draw together. “What makes you say that?”

“The way she ended the letter.”

“What do you mean?” She glances between me and the letter. “I just read it, and I didn’t—”

“I know. Neither did I. Not the first time or even the first seven times I read it, but Josie, read it again.”

She shuffles the papers in her lap, looks down, and starts to read again.

Dear Norah,

I don’t know how to begin this letter. I don’t even really know what to say. Truthfully, I wasn’t going to say anything at all. I was going to stay silent and hide in the shadows and keep the truth to myself.

But I saw your wedding announcement in the newspaper.

Then I saw an article about you and Thomas and your happy life. It was an interview you did for Page Six. The photo of you and him gave the appearance that everything was bliss. And the journalist went on and on about what a beautiful couple the two of you are and how successful Thomas is and what a great man he is and how sweet and devoted you are to him.

I felt sick after reading it, and I just couldn’t keep the truth to myself.

I guess what makes this letter so hard is that you were always so kind to me. And what I did to you, whether you knew or not, was terrible.

What I’m about to tell you is going to make you feel awful and betrayed and probably a whole bunch of other emotions that you don’t deserve to feel.

God, Norah, I’m so sorry for what you’re about to read.

About three months into my position as Thomas’s assistant, we started an affair.

And it was a fully involved affair. It lasted for months. We slept together at the office. At your apartment when you were out of town on a girls’ trip. A few times, I even went on his business trips with him for the sole intention of continuing our affair.

He told me he loved me. He told me he wanted to marry me. He told me he was going to call things off with you soon. He told me a lot of things, but the day I found out I was pregnant with his child, everything changed.

When I told him about the baby, he became a different man. At one point, when I mentioned the possibility of telling you about the pregnancy, he got violent.

I look back on things now and realize how wrong I was about him. How wrong I was about myself. How wrong I was in what I did to you.

The day after I told Thomas I was pregnant, people showed up at my front door to talk to me. It was Thomas’s lawyer, your mother, and her lawyer. They were pretending to be nice but kept referring to the baby as “the situation that we need to deal with.”

This living, growing child inside my body was a situation to them. Not a human. Not a baby. But a problem they needed to fix.

In the moment, I didn’t fully comprehend that. I was mostly just in shock, and their manipulative words were clever in their delivery. They made me feel bad about myself. They made me feel like I was the one who created “this problem.” They even went as far as to tell me that the pregnancy would ruin my life. That I had so much potential, and if I stopped my life and career to raise a child, all of that potential would be lost.

My life would be lost.

They verbalized all the insecurities I was already having about being pregnant. It goes without saying that an eighteen-year-old girl who spent most of her life in and out of foster care is already thinking about those kinds of things. And it didn’t help that I trusted your mother so much. I mean, she had helped me with so many things. Helped me in ways that no one in my life had ever done before.

I was scared. And worried. And I didn’t know if I could even handle raising a baby on my own.

I was barely making rent as it was on the small internship wage I was getting from King Financial, and I wanted to keep going to college.

The next parts of this story are painful. Painful for a lot of reasons, but mostly, because I let them talk me into something I should’ve never considered.

They told me an abortion was the best way to handle “the situation.” Your mother ensured they would make sure all my medical bills were handled, and that only the best doctor in the city would do the procedure, one she knew well personally. She said she’d make sure I’d be in the best hands and that I was doing the right thing for my future.

The two lawyers insisted I sign an NDA. They told me if I signed it, I would receive financial compensation that would give me a generous start in life.

They dangled the golden ticket in front of my face, but there was only one stipulation—I had to have an abortion and sign an NDA that prevented me from ever talking about Thomas King or “the situation” again.

I don’t know why I did it, but I signed the NDA. I agreed to abort the child inside me. I guess, in that moment, I did it because what they were saying felt like it made sense.

Once I signed the NDA, your mother scheduled my appointment. She even made sure that a fancy black town car with tinted windows and a driver came to pick me up that day. The driver was going to take me to the clinic and take me home after. It was the full five-star treatment…for an abortion.

I got in the car. And I let him drive me all the way to the private clinic your mother had chosen and said was the best in the city.

I got out of the car, and I went inside. I let the nurses prep me for my procedure.

I was there to go through with it. I was there to deal with “the situation.”

And I realized I couldn’t do it.

This baby wasn’t a “situation” to me. It was a baby. My baby.

I left the clinic that day, still pregnant. And because the medical staff are bound by patient privacy laws, they could not discuss my case with anyone but me.

I let the driver take me back home. And when your mother called me the next day to check up on me, I told her everything went fine with the procedure.

The next day, an envelope was delivered to me, and it contained the hush money that had been promised.

I used that money to move out of the city. And eight months later, I had a boy. A beautiful, healthy baby boy I named William.

It’s funny how when a child comes into your life, your perspective on everything changes.

I don’t regret my child, but I regret what I did to you.

I regret that I never once told you the truth.

I am so incredibly sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even know if you should. I don’t know that I deserve any more kindness from you.

But I do know that you deserve the truth. You deserve to know who you are marrying. You deserve to know what your mother was a part of.

You deserve to have a choice.

I hope the truth will set you free. And I hope what you do with it will change more lives than just yours.

I’ll forever be sorry.

Alexis

“I’m not getting it, Nore.” Josie looks up at me, the letter still in her hand. “What is it you’re seeing other than our snake of a mother and your ex-fiancé forced a young girl into an impossible situation—which is bad enough, by the way?”

“The part about what I do with the truth changing more lives than just mine,” I say with a frown. “What do you… Do you think that means there were other girls they did this to?”

Josie’s face melts in consolation.

“Oh my God.” I cover my hand with my mouth. “You do. You think this wasn’t the first. You think it was just the first time someone was brave enough to speak up…?’

“Norah, I don’t know much about Thomas besides him being an abusive asshole, but I know our mom. And I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

For as long as I can remember, Josie has hated our mother. I truly can’t remember a time when she had something nice to say about her.

“Why, Josie? What did she do when we were kids that makes you so sure? You were always so sure.”

“Norah…”

“What? Just say it.”

“Mom killed Jezzy, Norah. She left her in the tub when she was too little, and she drowned.”

Everything inside me comes crashing down, and my ears feel like they’re filled with the ocean. “No.” Sᴇaʀch Thᴇ FɪndNøvel.ɴᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“You were too young. I knew you probably didn’t realize, and the investigation never proved it, but I knew. I saw the aftermath. I saw…” Her voice chokes, and one tear slips down her cheek. She swipes it away with an angry hand. “Eleanor knows what she did. And Norah, she doesn’t care. Because she never ever cares about anything but herself.”

Tears burst the dam in my eyes and start streaming down my face, unchecked. Josie jumps up from the couch and throws her arms around me, pulling me into a hug.

“I’m sorry, Norah.” She hugs me tighter. “I’m so sorry because I know how hard this must be to hear. But Eleanor Ellis is a vapid narcissist capable of the worst kind of behavior in every situation if she’s desperate enough,” she whispers directly into my hair. “Even when the victims are her daughters.”

We stay like that for a long moment, my mind reeling with thoughts of Summer and Jezzy and Alexis. The past twenty-four hours are a heavy weight on my shoulders. And coming home to this, to Josie reading that letter, has only awakened the nagging ache I’ve had since I walked out on my wedding day.

“So, what am I supposed to do now?” I whisper. “I don’t think I can ignore this awful feeling that there’s more to this whole thing any longer. That it’s possible there’re more women who have been hurt by Thomas.” By our mother.

“You move on. We plan. We investigate. And eventually, hopefully, we put Eleanor Ellis and your asshole ex in the kind of place where none of us will hear from them again.”

I step back out of her embrace incredulously. “Are you suggesting we murder them?”

“Hey, if the shoe fits!”

“Josie! Maybe I should’ve said, but I’m morally opposed to that particular sin.”

My ridiculous sister laughs, the maniac. “All right, then. We’ll come up with another plan. One that sets you, me, and whoever else needs to be, free from our mother and your asshole ex.”