Whisper Network

On April 18, Ardie gestures for Rosalita to come into her office. Ardie is on the phone. Being asked to wait like this would normally irritate Rosalita, but now she is here to give Ardie fresh tamales and the good news that Salomon got into the private school. They embrace—this is the best thing that has happened in at least a month.

To Rosalita, it will always be notable that Salomon got into the program the day after Ames died. Cleaning while thinking of her son, Rosalita finds pictures of Grace, Sloane, and Ardie in the urinals, set up so that men can urinate on their faces. Rosalita and Crystal leave the bathroom half cleaned. Rosalita senses that seeing Katherine and Ames in his office, the vomit she found in Ames’s trash can, and the pictures in the urinals must all be related. Opening her paycheck, Rosalita sees that it is substantially less money than usual.

The first-person plural narrator describes women as constantly guilty about not being able to balance their work-life, motherhood, and social life perfectly. This ambient, generalized guilt does little to hide that “one of us, we would learn, really was guilty” (339).

Sloane visits Grace, who is still not ready to go back to work. Sloane feels the need to protect all her friends right now and worries that Grace felt pressured into joining the lawsuit because she reports to Sloane. Sloane tells Grace that it does not look good to skip work after Ames’s death, and then asks if Grace wants to talk about whatever is going on. Grace speaks vaguely about feeling bad that she did not have very much to say to the detectives. She then informs Sloane that she joined the lawsuit because Ames tried to manipulate her by acting interested in her career—she now sees that Ames saw her as a weak target he could use to take his side. Grace tells Sloane that she saw the Prescott hotel keycard in his wallet; Grace also confesses that she was at the Prescott to get some sleep. Grace speaks about how guilty she has been feeling lately, Sloane commiserates and holds her hand, noticing that Grace is not wearing her wedding ring.

Grace keeps dreaming about jumping off the building. She worries she will forever be thinking of her last words to Ames.

Grace asks Katherine if Katherine will speak up about Ames—it would help counter the Truviv’s claim to the media that the women are evil. Katherine immediately says yes. Grace asks if Katherine saw Ames before his death. When Katherine says she looked for him but did not find him, Grace is not sure whether to believe her, especially after she sees an injury on Katherine’s finger. Ardie, Sloane, and Grace walk Katherine to HR. Many hours later, they see movers cleaning out Katherine’s office—she is relocating to a temporary new office upstairs. Grace gets served.

In a deposition transcript from April 26, Katherine claims that Ames never sexually approached her, that Sloane, Grace, and Ardie are obsessed with hating Ames, and that she felt pressured into hating him, too. She wants to believe women, but Sloane seemed to take immense joy in adding Ames’s name to the BAD Men List.

In a meeting with Cosette on April 20, the friends learn that Truviv filed a countersuit—they are being sued for wrongful death. Cosette claims that Truviv takes sexual harassment seriously, but that the company cannot allow women to make false claims as a money-making scheme. Cosette is making the case that all three of them are responsible by using Sloane’s memorandum to Abigail’s school district, which argues that multiple parties can be held responsible for one person’s death. Grace is hurt by Katherine’s choice to be a witness for Truviv; Ardie suspects that the company financially incentivized Katherine. When Ardie tells Cosette that they were not bullying or harassing Ames, Cosette responds that the purpose of the BAD Men List was to shame. Cosette compares the women to the teenagers from the memorandum, arguing that Sloane was simply upset that Ames was interested in a younger woman. She ends the meeting by noting that Ardie acting as Abigail’s lawyer was against company policy.

Sloane figures out that Cosette knows about the memo from Katherine—Ardie must have told Katherine about it. Ardie refuses to feel bad: Maybe she should not have told Katherine, but Sloane should not have been hanging out with Tony and Braylee behind Ardie’s back. Sloane swears she would never gossip about Ardie behind her back or put her job at risk; Ardie swears she would never cheat on her husband.

Although Katherine still works in the office, the women no longer see her, questioning the choices they made with regard to her.

The depositions have started. Sloane got Helen Yeh’s son an internship, so Helen returns the favor by acting as a lawyer for Sloane, Grace, and Ardie on a contingency basis—meaning, they will only pay her if they win. The case is not looking promising. Truviv is making the women look dramatic and unreliable for using the BAD Men List. Sloane tries to keep their morale up, but is worried about losing the case, her job, her husband, and Ardie’s friendship. Their conversations always end up being about Katherine.