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**
What the hell had I just done?
I rushed off the elevator onto the 18th floor, inside the Legal Department.
My body buzzed like someone had slapped me, leaving the sting to rumble underneath my skin.
My thoughts were on fire.
This was Chillicothe all over again.
And I did what I always did.
My earliest memory is of running.
My brother, Sam, hadn’t been born yet.
And she kept telling me to hurry.
I don’t know who or what we were running from.
I didn’t hit the override switch for the reserve lighting; the dim spotlights were enough.
I needed the cloak of darkness to cover my shame.
I darted through a maze of soft-walled cubicles in the center of the floor that housed the support staff.
Attorney offices, tight but windowed, formed a perimeter around the maze.
With any luck, it would be over an hour before people would start to trickle in.
They see what I want them to see.
Ellice Littlejohn, the consummate professional.
My legal advice spot-on.
Impeccably dressed, a funny quip when needed.
I’m the one they admire and respect.
That’s who they see.
I stood inside the cramped, drafty space that doubled as my office.
I’m the only Black person in the Legal Department.
I used to dream of becoming the chief legal officer or even the CEO of a Fortune 500.
I was closer to menopause than marriage material.
Michael always paid me so well, I learned to ignore it.
The inklings of a headache nibbled at my left temple.
Having portable heaters in your office was a violation of company policy.
I closed my eyes.
A jagged bloody hole in his head.
A gun on the floor beside him.
My eyes popped open.Suicide?It didn’t make sense, although Michael had complained about his wife recently.
Maybe something more happened between them.
Maybe she found out about us.
What would I do now?
The farther away from this, the better.
God forgive me.All I had to do was call for help.
Surely calling for help wouldn’t be enough for anyone to dig through my background.
I’d made the right decision to leave his office.
My sticking around to answer a flurry of questions from the police wouldn’t bring him back.
And then, in an instant, sadness engulfed me.
I stared out at the pink-orange blush of dawn crawling across the city.
Long fingers of white clouds slowly inched across the sky.
A Southern mecca for business and industry.
I was still staring out the window when the lights popped on across the floor.
Someone else was here.
I knew there were no security cameras in the executive suite.
Michael had told me.
Still, I couldn’t help but think:Had anyone seen me leavingthe 20th floor?
I watched the door and perked up to listen for more sounds.
The walls in the Legal Department had the soundproof capacity of toilet paper.
But things went silent.
Morning, sunshine!"
I tolerated it only because he brought in good work product and good gossip.
Rudy and I had worked on several legal panels together over the years and became good friends.
He repaid that favor with unwavering loyalty, one of the few people I trusted at Houghton.
“Why are you here so early?”
I heard my fragile nerves popping through the cracks in my voice.
“Good morning to you, too.”
Couldn’t get back to sleep.
What dragged you in this early?"
I hesitated for a few seconds, skirting through my brain for some deflection.
I feigned a smile.
“Haven’t you heard?
I sleep here now since the settlement fell apart in the Robbins litigation.”
“Good luck.”
“Oh snap, you wanna hear the latest?”
Rudy, still wearing his overcoat, glanced over his shoulder before slipping inside my office.
“yo, Rudy.
No gossip this early, okay?”
I rubbed a thumb into my left temple.
Morning traffic and sirens echoed up from the ground below.
“I heard Jonathan’s having an affair.
Guess who the lucky lady is?”
I sighed deeply and settled in.
I knew he wouldn’t rest until he could unload the latest nugget he’d uncovered.
Rudy was King of the Gossip Mill.
His friendly nature and the ability to talk to anyone made people tell him their deepest, darkest secrets.
And then, he told me.
Under any other circumstances, I might have indulged him and pretended to be interested.
I shook my head and shrugged.
“Willow… Willow Sommerville.
I signed into my computer and pretended to read something from the monitor.
“Oh!Is that all you have to say?”
“What’s up?”
Rudy said, inspecting me like a pair of Michelin tires on a used car.
“You okay?”
“Just a little tired, I guess.”
“You sure?”
He raised an eyebrow.
Rudy had picked up on a scent.
“I know you’re my boss, but you’re my buddy, too.
“I’m good.”
“Seriously, I’m fine.
Just a little out of sorts.
Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Hey, did you guys see the ambulance downstairs?”
Oh God.I glanced at my watch.
It wasn’t even 8 o’clock.
Someone had discovered Michael’s body already.
Rudy’s eyes grew wide.
There’s an ambulance and a ton of police cars in front of the building.
Jimmy, down at the security desk, said something happened up on 20.
But he didn’t have any details.
Rudy and I dashed over to my window and stared down onto the street below.
The entire block of Peachtree Street was a blur of red and blue lights.
Traffic was snarled all the way up to Seventeenth Street.
A heavy sense of dread settled in my chest.
I backed away from the window.
“Are you serious?”
Rudy said, asking no one in particular.
“I’ll be right back.”
Anita and I watched him hustle from my office and down the hall.
I knew he was off in search of his sources to shake them down for information.
I already knew what his sources knew.
“What d’ya think happened up there?”
Anita said, removing her coat.
I didn’t respond.
The lingering headache tightened its vise across my forehead.Calm down.I had to keep my wits about me now.
That’s the way it worked around Houghton.
Fifteen minutes later, Rudy walked into my office with a grim face and closed the door.
“Michael committed suicide.”
“Who told you that?”
My skin began to buzz again.Had anyone seen me leaving the 20th floor?
“Don’t ask.
Rudy shook his head.
“That doesn’t make sense.
“yo don’t talk like that.”
I pushed around a couple folders on my desk to quell my nerves.
Rudy slumped into the chair in front of my desk.
It’s a private act.”
I swiveled my chair and stared out at the fully blossomed winter sunrise now bathing the downtown skyline.
I thought about my own life.
Decades pass and I think I’ve processed the horror, but somehow it still ebbs and flows.
People around here didn’t see the real me.
As expected, I had a hard time concentrating on work.
Michael had tried to kill himself before.
Michael accidentally shot himself.
All of it was so far from the truth and what I knew about him.
I’d had enough.
I decided to go down to the lobby for a cup of tea and some clarity.
I rounded the corner out of Starbucks when I spotted Hardy King, the director of corporate security.
Hardy made two of me and I’m not petite.
Hardy was originally from New Jersey.
I didn’t have one either.
She made a chopping motion and said I probably shouldn’t hurt the teacher.
I learned the proper way to say the wordaskand never made another diction mistake again.
My first lesson in code-switching.
Hardy threw both arms around me in a big bear hug.
“You heard?”
“How you doing?
What about the rest of the folks in Legal?”
Hardy had served as a witness in a few cases and knew everyone in the Legal Department.
He was also a widower with no kids.
I figured he was probably lonely, so I always felt a little sorry for him.
“I think we’re all in shock.
It doesn’t make sense.”
Hardy shook his head sadly.
“Yeah, Mikey was one of the good guys.”
I was nervous, but I had to ask.
“Who found him?”
She’s a mess now too.
It wasn’t a pretty scene.
We had to send her home.”
Michael’s bloody body flashed through my mind again.
Hardy looked at me, all sad and pitiful with the corners of his mouth folded down.
“Did he say anything to make you think he’d do something like this?”
That’s why everyone’s in shock.
I didn’t think he even owned one.”
Two women passed by us, laughing about something.
They weren’t particularly loud, but their jovial behavior seemed out of place in the lobby today.
Hardy and I watched them until they were out of earshot.
“Did he leave a note?”
Hardy scratched his graying buzz cut.
A part of me was glad he didn’t.
Whatever demons Michael wrestled with should remain his own.
Less fodder for the gossip herd to feed on.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered what part I might have played in his death.
Had this been his way out of a bad marriage and a lackluster affair?
“I guess it might not matter now, but was there anything going on in Legal?
Some big case you guys were trying that was getting to him?
Stressing him out?”
I’m telling you, he was fine.”
“This is crazy stuff.”
Hardy shook his head slowly.
“And I think the media is gonna have a field day with all this.
Don’t forget about the folks outside.”
I turned toward the lobby windows facing out onto Peachtree Street.
“The protesters have been out there for months now,” Hardy said.
“I can’t imagine they’ll let up now that the news cameras are around.”
“Yeah, that needs to stop too.”
A few weeks after, several Black employees in Operations joined and alleged they were denied management promotions.
The company was bracing for a lawsuit.
Over the weeks leading up to the holidays, the protesting crowds had grown smaller.
There weren’t more than a handful now.
But Hardy made a good point.
Racial discrimination allegations and an executive officer’s suicide could be a recipe for a PR nightmare.
“You don’t think the two are connected?”
“It won’t matter if the news guys can spin it the right way.
Either way, this is not a good time for Houghton.”
Excerpted from the bookAllHerLittleSecretsby Wanda M Morris.
Copyright 2021 by Wanda M. Morris.
From William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
