CHAPTER 69: What Nene Knew

POV: Avalon Pierce

He heard Selene’s voice change from the kitchen.

He’d learned that register over the past year the way you learned the sounds of a house you lived in. Which floorboard, which pipe, which silence meant something.

He was in the study doorway before she hung up.

She was sitting very still with the phone in her lap looking at the wall opposite.

“What?” he said.

She looked up at him.

“Whitmore’s legal team found a thirty year old documents from Nene’s personal files in federal discovery,” She paused. “ Avalon, Nene knew about  your father, about Whitmore and knew exactly what happened to him.”

The study was very quiet.

He came in and sat down.

“How much did she know?” he said.

“Diana said everything. From documentation to letters between Nene and a private investigator she hired eighteen months after your father died. He traced the accident back to Whitmore and had evidence, real evidences.”

“She had evidence.”

“Yes.”

“For thirty years she had evidence and she said nothing.”

Selene didn’t answer because there was no answer that helped.

Avalon sat with it.

He thought about Nene, the woman who had raised him after his father died and  had held Pierce Holdings together through decades of pressure and competition and threat. She had structured a will so elaborate and so deliberate that it had reached past her own death and rearranged his entire life.

He’d always known she was strategic but hadn’t known the strategy went this deep.

“If she had evidence why didn’t she go to the police, the federal authorities or to anyone.” He asked to no one in particular.

“Diana thinks she was protecting something.”

“What?”

“You.” Selene said it quietly. “Diana thinks Whitmore made the same visit to Nene that he made to Catherine and gave the same warning dressed as condolence, so, Nene made the same calculation Catherine made.” She paused. “She had a young grandson ,she was alone and so buried all the evidence.”

Avalon stood and started pacing before finally settling by the window.

Outside San Francisco was doing its morning thing, delivery trucks and coffee shops opening and people moving through their ordinary lives completely indifferent to the fact that thirty years of buried truth was sitting in a federal discovery file somewhere.

His grandmother had known, carried it and had built an entire life around protecting what remained while the man responsible sat on a committee overseeing her company.

“The will,” he said.

Selene was quiet.

“The marriage clause forcing me to marry you and bringing you back.” He turned around. “She was building something not just protecting the inheritance.”

Selene said slowly.“She was building a case by bringing us together. She was creating the situation that would eventually surface everything, she knew if you and I were in the same room long enough, if Pierce Holdings was contested enough, it would all come out eventually.”

“She used us.”

“She protected us,” Selene said. “The way she knew how, which happens to be the long way.”

He looked at her.

The woman sitting in his study at seven in the morning with a Pierce Foundation proposal on her laptop and thirty years of his family’s history rearranging itself around her.

“I think she knew about you,” he said. “About what Catherine did and about Elena.”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“She brought you back anyway.”

“She brought me back specifically,” Selene said. “I think she brought me back because she knew, she understood what had been taken from both of us and she wanted to give it back the only way she could.”

Avalon sat back down.

He felt tired and that had nothing to do with the hour. Every time he thought he understood the shape of it another door opened.

“The documents,” he said. “What happens to them now?”

“They’re part of federal discovery. The prosecutor has them. Whitmore’s team found them and thought they’d help his defense by showing prior knowledge that went unacted on.” She paused. “Diana thinks it does the opposite. It shows the depth of Whitmore’s reach and how far his intimidation extended. A grieving widow burying evidence because a powerful man came to her house and used the word pragmatic.”

“It strengthens the prosecution.”

“Significantly.”

Avalon just stared into space as he thought about Nene in the months after his father died. She was young and fierce enough. The woman who had built something from nothing and had done it while carrying a secret that would have destroyed her if it surfaced wrong.

“She was extraordinary,” he said quietly to no one in particular.

Selene said nothing.

She understood that some sentences weren’t asking for a response.

Margaret arrived at nine.

She’d heard from Diana too and she came the way Margaret always came when something was serious. Prepared, composed and already three steps ahead.

She sat down and looked at them both and said: “Nene told me, at least some of it some years ago.”

The room went very still.

“How much?” Avalon said.

“Well,  her  suspicions about Whitmore. That she’d had someone look into it.” Margaret looked at her hands. “She didn’t tell me she had documentation, she  just said she knew and that she’d decided the safest thing was to build the company strong enough that Whitmore could never touch it.” She looked up. “She said the best revenge was making Pierce Holdings untouchable.”

“She spent thirty years making it untouchable,” Selene said.

“Yes.”

“And then left it to me,” Avalon said.

“She left it to both of you,” Margaret said. She looked at Selene directly. “She told me once — about two years before she died — that the worst thing she’d ever done was stay silent about what Catherine did to you.” She paused. “She said if she ever got the chance to fix it she would.”

Selene was very still.

“The will,” Margaret said simply.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

The apartment held the weight of it and of three people sitting with a dead woman’s intentions finally fully visible after thirty years of being buried under everything else.

Avalon looked at Selene.

She was looking at her hands.

He reached across and covered them with his.

She turned her palm up and held on.

“She knew about Elena too,” Selene said quietly. Not sad or angry, just absorbing it. 

Margaret was quiet for a long moment.

“Yes,” she said finally. “She knew.”

After Margaret left they sat in the study for a long time without talking.

The Pierce Foundation proposal was still open on the laptop.

Two names at the top.

Eventually Selene reached over and added a third.

Underneath hers and Amara’s.

In memory of Lorraine Pierce.

Avalon looked at it.

Felt something settle in his chest that had been unsettled for as long as he could remember.

“That’s right,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

Avalon’s phone rang.

Unknown number.

He answered.

A male voice he didn’t recognize. The person on the other end was calm and professional 

“Mr Pierce, my name is David Okafor. I’m a journalist with the Financial Times and we recently obtained the federal discovery documents relating to your grandmother’s private investigation files.” He paused. “We’re running the story tomorrow morning and I  wanted to give you the opportunity to comment before publication.”

Avalon looked at Selene.

She read his face and sat up straight.

“The whole world is about to know,” he said after he hung up.

Selene looked at the laptop screen, directly at Nene’s name.

“Good,” she said. “She deserves to be known.”