THE WOMAN THEY BURIED TWICE

Chapter One The Girl in the Grey Suit Female Lead POV — Joanna The chair at the back of the conference room was the hardest one in the building. Joanna knew this because she had sat in every chair on the fourth floor during her lunch breaks, one each day since she started, testing them like a person with too much patience and too much purpose. She had chosen this seat on purpose. From here, she could see the glass wall that separated the main boardroom from the corridor. She could see the long table, the water glasses, the projector light washing everything in pale blue. She could see the twelve people seated around that table. And she could see, very clearly, the woman at the far end holding a coffee mug with both hands and smiling at something Matthew Crane just said. The woman was Glory Wells or rather, Glory Crane. That was what she called herself now. She was wearing a cream blouse and small pearl earrings. Her hair was pulled back in the way Joanna used to wear hers before everything happened. She had even copied the part…Left side, slightly off-center. It was such a small thing and it turned Joanna's stomach hard. "New girl." A voice came from beside her. Joanna turned. The man at the next desk was young, maybe twenty-two, with ink on three of his fingers and a habit of chewing the end of his pen. His name badge said Ray. "You're staring at the glass wall," Ray said. "Everybody does it the first week then stops after a while." "I wasn't staring," Joanna replied. "I was checking the light. It hits the screen at an angle that makes the numbers on the slide hard to read." Ray blinked. "Oh." He looked at the glass wall, then back at her. "I never noticed that." "Most people don't." Joanna looked back at her notepad and wrote something down. It was not about the light. Her name on this floor was Benita Cole. She had her badge, her ID card, her email address, and a neat little desk near the window with a plant she had brought from home on day two. A small cactus. She chose it because cacti survive being ignored. Three years ago, she had been Joanna Wells, almost-bride, almost-wife, almost-owner of thirty percent of the Crane Group. She had sat at a breakfast table on the morning of her wedding and drunk a cup of chamomile tea her sister had made for her with soft hands and a softer voice. She remembered the taste of it. Slightly bitter under the sweet like something had been added. She had not thought about it fast enough. She had woken up in a stranger's arms, coughing river water, with no idea of her name. The man who pulled her out was called Mr. Osei. He had strong hands and a quiet house by the water and two dogs who slept near the fireplace. He had wrapped her in a blanket and called the nearest clinic. When the nurse asked for her name, she could not speak for four hours. When she finally did, she could only say the name of the cove she had been brought to. The nurse wrote "Benita" at the top of the form and that was who she became. She spent two years and four months in that coastal town. She baked bread in the mornings, stacked shelves in the afternoons and sat by the water most evenings, trying to feel like someone who knew where she came from. The memories came back in pieces, like a puzzle dropped on the floor. A face and smell here and there. The sound of a wedding song she had chosen herself playing faintly behind a wall she could not yet see past. Then one morning she woke up and it all came back at once…every single piece, the breakfast table, the tea, Glory's soft hands, the car, the water. She had sat very still for a long time..she then made a list of what she's going to do. Step one: Find out what her sister had built on top of her life. Step two: Take it apart quietly. Step three: Take back everything the contract had given her before anyone pushed her into a river to stop her from having it. It's been four days since she arrived here . She had her desk, her cactus and her grey suit. She had her notepad full of things that had nothing to do with light angles. She had a sealed letter from a law firm in her bag that she had not yet opened, because the lawyer had told her to wait until the end of the week before reading the first result. The conference room erupted in light laughter. She looked up through the glass. Glory was standing now, pointing at something on the screen with a red pen. Matthew Crane sat back in his chair with his arms folded and his face calm. He was watching Glory the way a man watches a television show he has seen before but cannot yet find the energy to turn off. Joanna tilted her head slightly. That was interesting. She had expected to see warmth between them, the kind that three years of living together produces even in the coldest people. What she saw instead was a particular kind of polite distance like two people who had agreed to the shape of something without agreeing to the feeling inside it. Ray leaned over again. "That's Mrs. Crane," he said, nodding at the glass. "She comes in twice a week…very involved" "Is she?" Joanna asked. "Very. Last month she had the whole third floor repainted because she said the color made her anxious." Joanna looked at the corridor wall. It was now a soft cream. Almost the same shade as Glory's blouse. "Hmmmm," she said. She turned back to her notepad and wrote down one more thing. Then she underlined it twice. The meeting in the boardroom ended twelve minutes later, people filed out. Matthew Crane walked ahead of the group, already looking at his phone. Glory walked just behind him, saying something to the woman beside her. She passed the glass wall. Joanna watched her go. The pearl earrings were ones their mother had given Joanna for her twenty-first birthday. She had not realized that until just now. She looked down at her notepad and pressed her pen to the page. Her hand was very steady but her chest was panting. Ray's phone buzzed. He glanced at it and pushed back his chair. "Drinks after work? The whole analyst group goes on Fridays." "Maybe next week," Joanna responded. "Sure." He grabbed his jacket. "Hey, what was your name again? I'm bad with new people." "Be..nita," she said. "Benita Cole." She stayed at her desk until the floor was mostly empty. She sat with her notepad and her cactus and the letter still in her bag. Outside the window, the city moved in its usual way, loud and indifferent and full of people who did not know her story. She needed a little more time before they did. She was reaching for her bag to leave when she heard footsteps stop behind her. She did not turn around immediately. When she turned, there was a man standing at the edge of her row of desks, not moving, not speaking. He was tall with his jacket half-buttoned and his eyes fixed on her left wrist with an expression that looked like someone who had just seen a ghost and was not sure whether to speak to it or run. Joanna pulled her sleeve down slowly but it was already too late. He had already seen it. The look on his face said he already knew exactly what it meant. She had been in the building for four days. She had not spoken to anyone of importance. She had not made a single move. Today and somehow, on a Friday evening when the floor was half empty and her sleeve was half an inch too short, someone had already found her.