A Revealing E-Mail

I have now passed the 38,000 words mark. I have crossed off half of the eight things that I had to do before my book could end. Things are moving quickly, but I'm worried that when things slow down now, I won't know what to do.

Here is when it is all revealed. Enjoy.

When Olivia received an e-mail from hdarcy3@darcypub.uk, she was concerned that he was sending her naked photos in an effort to entice her to change her mind and go out with him. After the Anthony Weiner “Weinergate” scandal, when the popular left-leaning Democratic representative had been caught sending naked photos of himself on Twitter to some women supporters, Olivia was convinced that basically anything was possible. Perhaps she could bribe him if this was the case; keeping the pictures from the media had to be worth at least half a million, if not more.

When she opened the e-mail, not a dick pic was to be found. It was a lot scarier than that.

To Olivia,
Don’t worry, this is not an e-mail re-expressing those sentiments that were so disgusting to you. You made your feelings very clear, perhaps a little too clear, and I will not speak those things to you again. But I feel that I must address some of the accusations that you directed towards me, as I feel that my actions and intentions have been misrepresented. After this e-mail, I will not contact you again. I will try to minimize the awkwardness as much as I can around the office. I apologize for any future discomfort that our working relationship may cause.
I am not sure what Fernando may have told you about our past disagreements, but based on your charges, I assume that he has not told the entire truth of what happened between us. We have known each other for some time, mostly as co-workers. I greatly admired his photography and writing, as did my father. It was through the encouragement and tutelage of my father that Fernando was able to succeed as he did while working for us. He was popular around the office, and he seemed to be a rising star in the travel literature world. I did not have any problems with Fernando during this time; in fact, we rarely spoke at all, as our relationship was purely work-based.
We had a cordial relationship until about one year ago. A woman named Olga Vennegoor of Hesselink Torres came to see me, insisting that one of our recent features had been plagiarized. She claimed that the story that we had printed, where Fernando had claimed that he had been locked in the Bram Stoker Museum in Dublin—with hilarious results—had in fact not happened to him at all. Olga had met Fernando during his travels, and had told him the story as it had happened to her. He then wrote himself into the encounter, and published it in Globetrotting, as well as in an anthology. As proof, she had the written statements of the two other people that were present, both saying that they had never even met someone named Fernando Wickham, and that only three people had been locked in that tomb. We looked into it, and we discovered that Fernando had not been in Ireland at the time that this allegedly took place. We knew that he had stolen the story, but what we didn’t know was whether this was the first time. We had no choice but to let him go, as we did not want to put ourselves at risk of being subject to legal action.
He did not take kindly to his dismissal, although he could not publicly express his anger, as he did not want it to be widely known where his many stories came from. I chose not to make this matter public either, as I did not want to ruin his chances of finding work in the industry. I had hoped that the experience would convince him to avoid plagiarism in the future.
Seeing as he could not seek revenge publicly, and he had no claims for legal recourse, he chose to hurt me privately. I had previously been in a relationship with the former editor of Mode, Alicia Bell. We had been together for several years, and I had been trying to decide on the best time to propose. The day that I had bought the ring, I discovered that she had recently begun an affair. She confessed that she had been sleeping with Fernando Wickham, who had begun pursuing her almost immediately after his dismissal. We broke up immediately, and soon after, he left her for another woman that he had probably been with all the while. He had made a lot of promises to her when they had briefly been together, likely in an effort to convince her to end things with me. This was all in an effort to get back at me; I don’t think that he ever had any feelings for her at all. His actions were purely motivated by revenge; he doesn’t seem to care who he hurts in order to get what he wants. I should have told you about this sooner, as I knew of his character and I was concerned (rightly so, apparently) that he would do something similar to you. For that, I am deeply sorry.
As for your charges regarding my friend Bigsley and your cousin Ellie, I do not deny that I encouraged Bigsley to end things with Ellie and move to New York so that he would not be at risk of contacting her. I did so in the interest of my friend, as I feared that his feelings for Ellie were much greater than hers for him. Perhaps I am overly paranoid because of my past, but I felt that I would want a friend to intervene if they suspected something similar in my relationship. I did not get involved because I wished to hurt Ellie. I am upset that things ended the way that they did, and for my part in this, I am once again sorry.

Yours,
Henry Darcy

Most e-mails that Olivia reads involve a LOL cat or a joke about men—amirite? It is rare that an e-mail can shake someone to their very core, and completely change the way that they think about some of the most important people in their lives. This e-mail did just that, and it was deeply unsettling.