My Wedding Dress In The Garage His Widow In My Home Chapter 19
I zoomed in on the screenshot and read it through once.
The celebration wasn’t over yet. Laughter drifted from the other side of the terrace. When Lena saw I hadn’t moved, she came over.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s planning to drag my past into my workplace.”
I handed her the phone.
The smile vanished from her face as she read.
“This isn’t just venting. It’s a threat.”
Two more messages came through from Mark.
*I’m so sorry. I had no idea she would do something like this.*
*People in the group are trying to talk her down, but she already posted it on Instagram.*
I opened Paige’s profile.
She had cropped the photo so that only she, Owen, and Sadie remained. In the caption, she claimed that right after losing her husband, she had been driven out by a jealous woman. She said the duplex was supposed to be the home Owen had promised Sadie, but I had pulled all the money before closing, leaving her and her daughter with nowhere to go.
In the final line, she tagged my company.
*Should a company that claims to care about vulnerable communities really let someone like this lead its public-interest projects?*
The comments were already multiplying.
Some people sympathized with her. Some had already gone to my company’s latest post to demand answers. Others recognized the engagement party background and commented that Owen and Paige had “always looked like the real family.”
That photo had been taken by me.
Once, they had used it to push me out of a family.
Now, Paige wanted to use it to push me out of my career.
“Don’t respond yet.” Lena pressed a hand over mine. “That’s exactly what she wants—a messy public fight.”
“I know.”
I closed Instagram and sent a message to my boss, asking if I could borrow a conference room for ten minutes.
Five minutes later, I projected the screenshots from my phone onto the meeting room screen.
After reading through them, my boss asked plainly, “Is what she’s saying about the money and the property true?”
“No.”
I opened my private cloud drive.
The bank records, the notice canceling escrow, the one-dollar lease, the doorbell video, and the iMessage screenshots were all arranged in chronological order. The save dates on every file were from months ago, long before Paige’s post.
“The forty-eight hundred dollars was transferred from our joint account to her landlord by Owen. The duplex never closed. What I withdrew was my own down payment.”
I opened the last page of the lease.
“Without my knowledge, they planned to use my money to buy the house, then rent the first floor—which was meant for my mother—to her indefinitely. For one dollar.”
My boss stared at Owen’s electronic signature, his brow furrowing.
“Do you have legal counsel with copies of this?”
“Part of it, yes. I’ll send over the complete file tonight.”
He turned off the projector.
“The company will not be punishing an employee over a social media post. But she has named the project and the client, so Legal needs to be involved. Send the full packet to HR in the morning. Let your lawyer handle the rest.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
Lena was still waiting for me when I came out of the conference room.
“Well?”
“I go to work tomorrow, same as always.”
She exhaled in relief. “And Paige?”
I thought of the backup files in my cloud folder—the ones I had never needed to use.
“If she wants to make this about facts, then the facts can answer for themselves.”
That night, I didn’t write a single word in the comments.
I only sent an email to the lawyer who had handled my joint account settlement.
It had five attachments.
After the message went through, I saved Mark’s screenshots to the folder, then went back out onto the terrace and finished my slice of celebration cake.
At nine o’clock the next morning, a cease and desist letter was delivered to Paige.