When Laurie returned to the office, she was surprised to see Ivan Gray standing at Grace’s desk. Gray had been scheduled to sign the participation agreement at the end of the day. I hope he didn’t change his mind, she thought, alarmed. She hurried down the corridor to catch him before he left, but when she got closer, she saw that he was handing papers to Grace. When he asked, “Do you need anything else from me?,” she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I can answer that,” Laurie said as she approached him. “That’s all we need for now. We’ll be in touch with you as we get closer to production.”
“Any idea when that will be?” Ivan added quickly. “I confess I’m getting excited to put out my side of the story.”
“I wish we were in a position to be more precise,” Laurie told him, “but we’re always juggling a million moving pieces. Rest assured, we’re eager to get to the truth, but want to make sure we’re thorough and fair to all sides. But I do have another question. We want to talk to Mrs. Wakeling’s assistant, Penny Rawling.”
Jerry chimed in. “The Wakeling family said they had heard rumors Penny was taking business classes at Hunter since leaving the family’s employ, but apparently that lead was a dead end. I checked, but unfortunately, my friend at Hunter College says there’s no student there by that name.”
“We haven’t kept in touch,” Ivan explained. “When I tried to make suggestions about her work, about how to be better organized, she thought I was criticizing her. That’s the only explanation I can think of for her refusal to defend me to the police.”
“And her relationship with Mrs. Wakeling’s family?”
He shrugged. “They thought of Penny as a secretary and not much more.”
Laurie noticed Grace clear her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Ivan said. “That’s not what I meant. They didn’t seem to have any connection to her beyond her being their mother’s employee. I thought Penny and I were closer than that. Both her parents died when she was so young. I was trying to mentor her.”
Laurie noticed Ivan’s gaze shift, and then he was waving at someone behind her. She turned to see Ryan Nichols, raising his fists into a mock one-two-three punch.
Oh, joy, she thought.
“Laurie was just asking me about Ginny’s assistant, Penny,” Ivan explained. Laurie realized she was tiring of being spoken about in the third person between these two. “She and I were never friends,” Ivan continued, “but we had a connection, and then she turned on me when Ginny died. I get the impression from Laurie’s expression that she was given a different version.”
“If you don’t mind, Laurie is right here,” Laurie said, pointing at herself. “And, from what I understand, Penny thought you were in a terrible rush to get married.”
He shook his head adamantly. “Absolutely not. The exact opposite. I know to a certainty that Penny heard me say that I would wait until we were a hundred years old if necessary. Ginny laughed and said, ‘And what use would I have for such an old man?’ Then she added, ‘Besides, I’ll have turned to dust by then.’ ” Ivan was smiling wistfully at the memory.
Ryan was looking down at his wing-tip shoes, appearing incredulous.
“What?” Ivan asked.
“Look, I’m going to have to ask you this at some point on camera, so I may as well pose the question now, Ivan: You said you’d sign a prenup. You had picked out a ring. And yet she refused to accept your proposal. She lied to her own children about her intentions. Why didn’t you leave her in the face of such rejection? Most men would have walked away.”
Laurie had been dubious about Ryan’s contributions to the show, but he was finally posing a tough question to his newfound friend. She was also curious about Ivan’s answer.
“I never even saw it as a rejection. She was a widow. She was deeply in love with her husband. She needed time to figure out what her life would look like, not just without him, but with another man in the picture. I was something entirely new, a major change in her life. When I offered her the ring, she said it was too soon to accept it. She needed time, and I was willing to wait, no matter how long it took. Forget the age difference. I was in love with Ginny. Why is that so hard to believe?”