And she had no idea that two floors below their apartment building, in a modest unit rented by a co-worker's cousin, Sandra Weddell, happened to be visiting for dinner. Close enough to the shared wall that certain sounds carried further than anyone in the Albert household ever bothered to consider. For now, though, Haley sat in her kitchen, wine glass in hand, believing the worst was finally behind her. She was wrong. Sandra Weddell sat at her cousin's kitchen table, half listening to dinner conversation, half scrolling through her phone, when a voice drifted through the thin wall separating the two apartments.
She almost didn't catch it at first. Just a murmur, muffled, the kind of background noise you tune out without thinking. But then a name floated through clear as anything. Marrow. Sandra's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
She knew that name. She'd spent an entire flight watching a woman try to humiliate a man over that exact name. Watched her fold under the weight of who he turned out to be. Sandra hadn't thought about that flight in days, not really. Though it had stuck with her more than she'd admitted to anyone.
She leaned closer to the wall, heart starting to pound. Already handled it. The voice said. And Sandra recognized it instantly. Hayley Albert.
Sharp, clipped, unmistakable. The same voice that had demanded a stranger be moved off a plane like he was furniture in the wrong room. The statement's out. Kenneth's been moved somewhere he can't cause problems. And Marrow's contract request is buried so deep in legal review it'll be months before anyone even looks at it.
A pause. A man's voice answering, lower, harder to make out. Roland, Sandra guessed. I told you I'd handle it, Hayley said, laughing now, a light satisfied sound that made Sandra's stomach turn. The video thing.
Already old news. People forget in a week. Give it two and nobody will even remember his name. Sandra sat frozen, fork still hovering, her cousin two seats away completely oblivious, chattering about something on the television. Sandra didn't chatter back.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and hit record. She held it near the wall for almost two full minutes, capturing enough. The confidence in Hayley's voice, the casual cruelty of it, the clear admission that this wasn't a misunderstanding at all. It was a cover-up, planned, executed, bragged about over wine like a job well done. When the voices finally faded, moving to another room, Sandra sat back slowly, hands trembling slightly around her phone.
She thought about Julian, the way he'd sat there on that plane, calm and steady, refusing to shrink himself down just because somebody wanted him to. She thought about the quiet dignity in his voice when he said, "You don't have to move. I ain't going nowhere. " She thought about her own job, her own paycheck, the risk of getting involved in something that wasn't technically hers to fix. Then she thought about staying silent, and how that felt worse. Over the next 2 days, Sandra turned the decision over and over in her mind, barely sleeping, running through every version of what could go wrong if she came forward.