The Wall
The weeks after our discovery felt like wading through quicksand. Every morning, I’d wake up with renewed hope, only to have it crushed by Martha’s increasingly frustrated phone calls.
“They’re stonewalling us, Cathy,” she’d say, her voice tight with anger. “The legal team is ‘reviewing’ our requests into oblivion.” We needed something concrete—a smoking gun that would blow this whole thing wide open.
But the wall of silence around Becca and Greg was impenetrable.
Coworkers who’d initially seemed sympathetic suddenly couldn’t remember important conversations. Security footage from key dates mysteriously went missing. Even the IT guy who’d helped me recover old emails stopped returning Martha’s calls.
I started to wonder if I was fighting a losing battle. One night, sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by unpaid bills, I broke down. “Maybe I should just let it go,” I told Martha over the phone, my voice cracking.
“I’m burning through my savings. Nobody’s hiring me. What if we never get the proof we need?” Martha was quiet for a long moment. “That’s exactly what they’re counting on, Cathy,” she finally said.
“That you’ll run out of money and hope before they run out of ways to hide the truth.” I wiped my tears, feeling foolish and old and tired.
But something in Martha’s voice told me she wasn’t ready to give up. And neither, I realized, was I. What happened the very next morning would change everything.