When the Agreement Expired, She Let It Go

Chapter 3 The List

I started with the files.

The foundation kept its records in the study at the Mount Vernon house, but Eleanor was old-fashioned, which meant she also kept paper copies. She had a filing cabinet in the basement, and I knew the combination because I had watched her open it once, three years ago, when she needed a document and had forgotten her reading glasses.

I went back to Mount Vernon Street the next day. Rosa let me in, and I told her I had left something in the study. She gave me that look again, the kind one, and I went upstairs.

The study was empty. I opened the desk drawer where Eleanor kept her keys, and I took the one to the basement, and I went down.

The basement was dry and cold, and the filing cabinet was against the back wall. I opened it and found what I was looking for.

The foundation had three sets of books. One was for the public, one was for the IRS, and one was for Eleanor. The third set showed the real numbers, and the real numbers told a story. There was money going to a shell company in Delaware that had no business existing. There were donations from people whose names I recognized, people who had been investigated by the SEC and had settled and moved on. There were payments to a consultant who had never done any consulting, at least not the kind you could put on a tax return.

I photographed everything. Then I put the files back exactly where I found them, and I went back upstairs, and I said goodbye to Rosa, and I drove home.

That night, I made a list.

The list had three names on it. The first was Eleanor Ashford. The second was Henry Ashford. The third was a man named Charles Reilly, who was the foundation's lawyer and who had been the one to draft the agreement I had signed five years ago.

I had met Charles Reilly twice. He was sixty, with a round face and a soft voice, and he had explained the agreement to me in a way that made it sound like a favor. I had not understood then what I was signing. I understood now.

The agreement had been designed to protect the Ashfords, not me. It gave them everything and me nothing, and it had a clause that said if I violated the confidentiality provisions, I would owe them the entire settlement plus damages. It was a trap. It had always been a trap.

I put the list in my laptop bag and went to bed. In the morning, I called a lawyer.

Her name was Diane Whitfield, and she worked for a small firm in Cambridge. I found her through a friend of a friend, and I told her I needed someone who was not afraid of the Ashfords.

"I'm not afraid of anyone," Diane said. She was fifty, with gray hair and glasses and a voice that was calm and sharp at the same time. "What do you have?"

I told her everything. The agreement. The robe. The settlement. The files.

She listened without interrupting. When I finished, she leaned back in her chair and looked at me.

"You have two options," she said. "You can take the settlement and the NDA and walk away. That's the easy way. Or you can fight. But if you fight, you need to understand that it will be ugly. The Ashfords have money and lawyers and connections. They will come after you. They will try to ruin you."

"I know," I said.

"Do you? Because this isn't a game. If you do this, you need to be prepared for the fact that they will find out what you have, and they will try to discredit you, and they will make your life very difficult."

I thought about the robe. I thought about the note. I thought about five years of being nobody, of being a piece of furniture, of being a woman who had signed away her dignity for money and had gotten exactly what she paid for.

"I'm prepared," I said.

Diane looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded.

"Alright," she said. "Let's get to work."