The Other Women
Chapter 09 - The Other Women
The two other women who agreed to speak with investigators, a former household chef named Priya Ahn and a longtime family friend named Grace Colgrove, provided accounts that, once compiled alongside Claire's and Bianca's own testimony, painted a considerably more disturbing picture of the study's history than anyone had initially anticipated.
Priya's account, given carefully and with the support of her own attorney, described an incident four years earlier, during her final week of employment with the Bellamy household, an encounter in the same private study that had ultimately driven her to resign without ever explaining the real reason to anyone.
"I told everyone I was leaving for a better opportunity," Priya told Detective Ostrander, during her formal interview. "I couldn't tell them the truth. I was afraid nobody would believe a household employee over a man like Edmund Bellamy, and I was afraid of what saying it out loud might cost me professionally, in an industry where his family's recommendation letter carried enormous weight."
Grace Colgrove's account, from an incident nearly seven years earlier, the earliest documented instance across all four women, described a similar pattern, an invitation to discuss charity business privately, followed by behavior that had ended her decades-long friendship with Rosalind entirely, though she'd never once explained the real reason for the sudden distance.
"I told Rosalind I was too busy for our usual lunches," Grace said, tears falling during her interview. "I couldn't bring myself to tell her what her husband had actually done. I've regretted that silence for seven years, watching from a distance while he continued building his public reputation as this generous, beloved philanthropist."
Marisol compiled the four accounts into a comprehensive timeline, presenting it to Adrian, Bianca, Claire, and Rosalind together during a difficult, emotionally exhausting meeting at her office.
"Seven years, minimum," Marisol said, laying out the documented pattern. "Four confirmed victims, though given how carefully he apparently avoided detection, I would not be surprised if the actual number is considerably higher than what we've currently documented."
Rosalind sat through the presentation in silence, tears falling steadily, the specific, complete collapse of thirty-six years of marriage finally, fully visible in front of her in a single, devastating document.
"I want to formally support all four of these women," she said, once Marisol had finished. "Publicly, if that's what they need from me. I understand I bear my own considerable failure in this, choosing not to look closely enough for years. I want to spend whatever time I have left actually making that right, as much as it's possible to make right."
Claire reached for her mother's hand, an old, complicated tenderness passing between them despite everything.
"That would mean a lot," Claire said quietly. "Having you actually believe us, instead of managing the story the way this family always has before."
Rosalind nodded, tears still falling. "I believe every single word. I should have believed it years ago, the first time some quiet, uncomfortable instinct told me something was wrong. I'm not making that mistake again."
Bianca, listening to the exchange, felt a specific, complicated gratitude toward a family that had, in the space of two exhausting weeks, transformed from something that had nearly destroyed her into something considerably closer to genuine, hard-won solidarity.
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"What happens now," she asked Marisol. "With the criminal case."
"Now we wait for Edmund to regain consciousness," Marisol said, "and we prepare for what I expect will become one of the more significant prosecutions this state has seen in years, given the number of victims and the considerable resources his defense team will inevitably bring to bear against all of you."
