cracks

Chapter 38:Cracks

The questions kept coming.

For forty minutes they came one after another and Sarah managed the room the way she managed everything, tight and controlled, not letting anyone talk over anyone else or push past the terms they had agreed to before coming in.

Judith answered every question asked of her.

She kept her voice flat and her words simple. No long explanations. No emotion she had not planned to show. Just the facts the way they happened and the truth the way she knew it.

By the time Sarah called the last question the room felt different from when they had walked in. She could see it in the journalists faces. The ones who had come in skeptical were now writing fast. The ones who had come in already believing were now sitting back with the look of people who had gotten more than they expected.

Sarah closed it down at three o’clock exactly.

“That is all for today,” she said. “Any further questions go through the contact details in the press pack on your way out.”

People started standing up and gathering their things.

Judith sat where she was.

Dan leaned toward her. “You did well.”

She nodded but said nothing.

Ethan was already on his feet talking quietly to Robert’s lawyer in the corner of the room. Elena was beside him with her phone out typing something. Robert himself sat at the end of the table looking at his hands. Just sitting. Like a man who had put something down that he had been carrying for a very long time and was still feeling the difference in his arms.

Judith looked at him.

“Mr. Ashby,” she said.

He looked up.

“Thank you,” she said. “For all of it. Last night and today.”

Robert looked at her for a moment. “Your father was a good man,” he said. “He deserved better than what happened to him. And so did you.”

Judith nodded once.

She stood up.

Sarah appeared beside her as the last journalist left the room.

“Three of the outlets are already running it live,” Sarah said. “The story is moving fast. Whitmore’s counter narrative is basically dead. Nobody is touching it now.”

“And my father in law’s press conference,” Judith asked.

“Finished an hour ago,” Sarah said. “Very few people covered it. The ones who did are now running our story instead.” She looked at Judith directly. “You did the right thing coming today. All of you.”

Judith picked up her bag from the back of the chair.

Her phone was full of missed calls. Numbers she did not know. A few she did. She scrolled through them quickly. Her mother had called twice. She would call her back in the car.

One number stopped her.

She stared at it.

Marcus Kane.

Three missed calls. No message.

She showed the screen to Dan who had come to stand beside her.

He looked at it. Then at her. “Do not call him back yet.”

“I was not going to,” she said.

She put the phone in her bag.

Ethan came over. He had seen the look that passed between them. “What.”

“Marcus Kane called three times during the press conference,” Dan said.

Ethan was quiet for a second. “He was watching it.”

“Yes,” Dan said.

“Live,” Ethan said.

“Yes.”

The three of them stood there for a moment.

Marcus Kane had stayed quiet through everything. Through the recording and the financial records and Robert’s police statement and the press conference. Not one move. Not one message. Just three phone calls to Judith during the one hour she was most visible and most untouchable.

That was not nothing.

“He wants to talk,” Judith said.

“Yes,” Ethan said.

“Should I,” she said.

Ethan looked at Dan. Dan looked at Ethan. Something passed between the two brothers that did not need words.

“Not today,” Ethan said. “Let him wait. Whatever he wants to say he can say tomorrow when we have had time to think.”

Judith nodded.

They walked out of the conference room together into the hotel lobby. Elena was already near the door with their coats. Robert and his lawyer were behind them talking quietly.

The lobby was busy with the normal afternoon business of a hotel. People checking in. A group near the bar. A man at the concierge desk. Nobody looked at them twice.

Outside through the glass doors London was doing what it always did.

Moving. Indifferent. Carrying on.

Dan’s phone rang as they reached the door.

He looked at the screen and stopped walking.

Judith looked at his face.

“Who is it,” she said.

Dan looked up at her. Then at Ethan.

“It is my father,” he said.

Nobody moved for a second.

Then Ethan said, “Answer it.”

Dan pressed accept and held the phone to his ear.

Everyone around him went quiet.

Dan listened for a long time without saying anything. His face did not change much. Just his jaw. Just the way he was holding the phone slightly tighter than necessary.

Then he said one word.

“No.”

And ended the call.

He lowered the phone and looked at both of them.

“He wants a meeting,” Dan said. “Tonight. Just the three of us. Him, me and Ethan. No lawyers. No press. No Judith.”

“And you said no,” Ethan said.

“I said no,” Dan confirmed.

Judith looked at Dan. Then at Ethan.

“He is going to keep trying,” she said.

“Yes,” Ethan said. “Let him.”

He pushed the hotel door open and held it.

They walked out into the afternoon together.