Chapter 12 - What Amanda Wanted From Laura’s Life
Daniel agreed to one final conversation.
Amanda came with no makeup and no attempt to defend the wedding.
Rachel attended.
So did Eric.
Amanda looked uncomfortable with witnesses.
Daniel wanted them there.
He placed copies of Laura’s emails on the table.
Amanda recognized them immediately.
“You read everything.”
“Yes.”
Amanda nodded.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Daniel asked the question he had postponed.
“When did helping Sophie become replacing Laura?”
Amanda flinched.
She did not give him a speech.
At first she said she did not know.
Daniel waited.
Then she tried again.
It began with guilt.
Laura had forgiven her.
Then died.
Amanda felt that she had been handed one final chance to prove she was not the selfish twenty-two-year-old friend Laura remembered.
She went to the fundraiser because she wanted to see Sophie.
She approached Daniel because she lacked the courage to walk up and say, Your wife asked me to find you.
Then Daniel liked her.
That felt good.
Too good.
“Laura always had the life I thought I was supposed to have,” Amanda said.
Rachel’s expression hardened.
Amanda looked at her.
“I know how that sounds.”
“Then don’t soften it,” Rachel said.
Amanda nodded.
Laura had seemed to move through life easily.
Marriage.
A child.
A husband who adored her.
Amanda had spent years telling herself she was over comparing them.
Then she entered Laura’s home after Laura was gone.
Daniel trusted her.
Sophie reached for her.
Family photographs slowly included Amanda.
The old envy returned in a form Amanda hated admitting.
She wanted to stop being the visitor in someone else’s life.
“So you removed her,” Daniel said.
“Piece by piece.”
Amanda began crying.
She admitted that the wedding had made the fear unbearable.
Laura’s pendant had been hidden inside a cosmetics case because Amanda planned to return it to Sophie years later.
Then Sophie found it while Amanda was getting dressed.
Amanda saw it in the child’s hands and panicked.
Not because Sophie had ruined anything.
Because the wedding was minutes away and Amanda imagined Daniel asking one question.
Then another.
Then finding the emails.
“I thought I was about to lose everything.”
Daniel looked at her.
“So you hurt Sophie.”
Amanda did not excuse it.
“Yes.”
That mattered.
It did not repair anything.
Daniel asked whether she believed Laura would have wanted her near Sophie now.
Amanda wiped her face.
May you like
“No.”
It was the first answer she gave that required nothing from Daniel.
