CHAPTER 164: Who

POV: Avalon Pierce

"Who would have known about the original letter?" Selene said.

"Catherine," he said. "The committee, and anyone Catherine told."

"Catherine wouldn't send it anonymously," Selene said. "She just spent three hours rectifying what she did wrong. She wouldn't then undercut herself."

"No," he said. "She wouldn't."

"So, who else knew?"

He thought for a moment.

"Margaret," he said slowly. "Catherine calls Margaret when she’s screwed up. She’s been doing it for thirty years."

Selene looked at him.

"Margaret wouldn't," she said.

"No," he said. "She wouldn't as well."

They walked around the nursery room for a bit, reciting the same short list of suspects and coming up against the same dead end.

Then Selene said, "The committee received it separately. It means someone accessed the original letter after Catherine edited it."

"Or before," he said. "If someone already had it."

"Catherine might have sent it on," Selene said. "Before she knew it was wrong, or to someone who thought they were congratulating us."

"Who did she tell?" he asked. "Before you called her."

They looked at one another.

"Call her," Selene said.

Catherine answered on the first ring.

"Before you say anything," Catherine said immediately. "There's something I have to tell you."

Avalon put the phone on speaker.

"I sent the original letter to one person last night, before Selene called me," Catherine said. "I was excited and wanted to share it with someone who would understand how much it meant to me."

"Who?" Avalon said.

A long pause hung in the air.

"Diana," Catherine said. "I sent it to Diana."

The room went suddenly still. Selene sank to the floor of the nursery.

"Why, Diana," Avalon said, his voice strained and quiet.

"She and I have been talking," Catherine said. "She reached out and I- I thought she was trying, I really thought we were both trying."

"You've been talking to Diana for months and didn't tell us?" Avalon asked.

"I know," Catherine said. "I know how that sounds."

"Why would Diana send the original letter to the committee?" Selene asked from the floor.

"I don't know," Catherine said. "I honestly don't know what she was thinking."

"We do," Avalon said. "If Elena stays in the letter and the foundation wins, Diana gets to feel like she was part of it. That she did something good for us after everything." He paused. "She wasn't trying to hurt you, Selene. She was trying to help herself."

Selene looked up at the ceiling.

"That's almost worse," she said.

"I'm so, so sorry," Catherine said. "I should have told you that we were in contact. I thought-"

"You thought you could manage it," Avalon said. "Like I used to."

A heavy silence fell on the line.

"Yes," Catherine said, her voice small.

He called Diana next.

She answered on the third ring.

"I know why you're calling," she said.

"Then talk," he said.

"I thought it would help," Diana said. "The nomination and what Selene has accomplished deserve to be seen in its entirety. Elena is part of that entire story."

"Elena is Selene's," he said. "Not the foundation's, the story's, and certainly not yours to decide what to do with."

"I know that now," Diana said.

"You knew it then," he said. "You chose to do it anyway."

"Avalon-"

"You've been trying to worm your way back into this family's good graces since you cooperated with the prosecution," he said. "And every time you try, you do it by making a unilateral decision about something that doesn't belong to you."

"That's not-"

"It is exactly what it is," he said. "And you know it."

A silence fell.

"What do you want me to do?" Diana asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Do absolutely nothing. Don't contact the committee. Don't send anything else. Don't contact Catherine. Don't contact us."

"Avalon-"

"I mean it, Diana," he said. "Nothing. This time, nothing is the correct action."

He hung up.

Selene was still on the floor. He sat down next to her.

"Diana," she said.

"Yes."

"She was trying to help herself."

"Yes."

"By using Elena?"

"Yes."

She was silent for a moment.

"I'm not angry at her the way I was at Catherine," she said. "I'm just tired of her."

"Yes," he said.

"I don't have the energy to spend on Diana anymore," she said. "I don't have any to spare."

"Then don't," he said. "I handled it."

She looked up at him.

"What did you say?"

"I told her to do nothing and stay away from us."

"That's all?"

"That's everything," he said. "The worst thing I can do to Diana is take away her ability to help or hurt us. For someone like her, irrelevance is worse than anger."

Selene looked at him.

"That's cold," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"And correct," she said.

"Yes," he said again.

She called Amara.

"The nomination," she said. "I need to know your honest opinion. Should we accept it?"

"The revised version," Amara said immediately. "Yes. Absolutely. The work deserves it."

"Even after all of this?"

"Because of all of this," Amara said. "The committee has seen the original letter. They know about Elena now, whether you wanted them to or not. The question is whether you let that define the foundation or let the work define it."

"The work," Selene said.

"Then we accept," Amara said. "And if we win, we win on the work."

"And if we lose?"

"We never entered this for awards, Selene. Kevin Walsh's forty-two young people don't care about awards."

Selene put down the phone and looked at Avalon.

"We accept the nomination," she said.

"Okay," he said.

"And Diana is done," she said.

"Done," he agreed.

Elena kicked. Three rapid, certain thumps that landed like punctuation.

Her phone rang at nine that evening. It was the committee. She answered it.

"Mrs Castellano Pierce," the woman said. "I wanted to inform you before the official announcement tomorrow. The panel has made its decision for the award tonight."

Selene watched Avalon from across the room, her heart in her throat. He watched her face.

"We would like to offer you the award," the woman said. "Based entirely on the revised nomination letter and the documented work of your foundation. The panel felt the work was stronger than any personal story attached to it. That felt significant to us."

"Thank you," she said, her voice trembling slightly.

She hung up and turned to Avalon, who rose to meet her.

"We won," she said.

He embraced her, carefully around her thirty-one-week belly, and she buried her face in his shoulder, feeling Elena move between them.

Later, her phone lit up on the table; it was a text from an unknown number.

Congratulations. The foundation deserves this. I mean that genuinely. – Diana

Selene read the text, then placed the phone face down.

"Diana," she said, the name heavy on her tongue.

Avalon glanced at the phone.

"Do nothing," she said.

She placed a hand on her stomach, deciding that her only focus for tonight was the life growing within.

But at midnight, while Avalon slept beside her, Selene lay awake, her eyes glued to her phone. Diana's text was still there, a glowing punctuation mark on the dark screen. She scrolled up. Above the text message, a forwarded email she hadn't noticed before caught her eye. It was from Diana to an address she didn't recognise, sent three days before the nomination letter, before all of this.

The subject line was stark: Pierce Foundation - Confidential Financial Records.