Chapter 5 - The Friendship That Came Back in Secret
Amanda agreed to meet Daniel at his brother’s office because Daniel refused to let her into the house.
Eric stayed in the conference room.
Amanda objected.
Daniel told her she could leave.
She stayed.
Without her wedding makeup and carefully styled hair, she looked exhausted.
Daniel placed the pendant on the table.
“Start with the email.”
Amanda looked at it.
Laura had contacted her five weeks before her surgery.
Not two months before, as Rachel remembered.
Laura’s first message was short.
I know we left things badly. I don’t want to carry that forever.
Amanda replied the same night.
For several weeks they exchanged messages.
At first they discussed college.
Then apologies.
Then Sophie.
Laura sent photographs.
Amanda sent memories she had kept.
They never met in person because Laura was recovering from childbirth and preparing for surgery.
“But you knew about me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about Sophie.”
“Yes.”
“You knew where we lived?”
Amanda hesitated.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at Eric.
Eric said nothing.
Amanda insisted she had not approached Daniel immediately after Laura died.
She had waited almost ten months.
Their first meeting had happened at a children’s hospital fundraiser.
Daniel remembered.
Amanda had been helping at the registration table.
He had spilled coffee on a program.
She had laughed.
They talked for fifteen minutes.
It had felt accidental.
“Was it?”
Amanda stared at the table.
Daniel repeated the question.
“Did you know I would be there?”
“Yes.”
The answer hollowed something out inside him.
Amanda quickly added that she had almost left.
She had sat in her car for twenty minutes debating whether to go inside.
She told herself she only wanted to see whether Daniel and Sophie were okay.
She had not planned to start a relationship.
“You planned to meet me.”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe we met by chance.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at the pendant again.
Now he understood why Amanda feared it.
The pendant was not merely proof of an old friendship.
It threatened the entire story of how their relationship began.
Still, one piece remained strange.
If Amanda wanted to hide Laura completely, why preserve the pendant for years?
Why keep it in the same bedroom where she was getting dressed to marry Laura’s husband?
Amanda touched the edge of the table.
“Because I couldn’t throw it away.”
Daniel almost laughed at the contradiction.
“You wanted to erase her from my life.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You asked me to move her wedding photograph out of the living room.”
“Because you looked at it every day.”
“She was Sophie’s mother.”
Amanda’s expression changed.
There.
Not grief.
Not guilt.
Something older.
May you like
Resentment.
For the first time, Daniel saw that whatever Amanda had once felt for Laura had never become simple.
