Chương 6
“Why would she think she had influence over our vendors?”
His mouth tightened.
“Because I let her.”
The answer was so quiet I almost missed it.
“What does that mean?”
“She liked telling people I had authority.”
“You do have authority.”
“Not the kind she claimed.”
I waited.
“She would call me in front of relatives and ask stupid questions about trucks or warehouses.”
He gave a humorless laugh.
“Half the time I think she just wanted them to hear me answering.”
“And?”
“And sometimes I played along.”
“How?”
“I’d say things like, ‘I’ll take care of it,’ or ‘Send me the name.’”
“You gave her the impression she could bring people into the company.”
“I gave her the impression I could.”
“You could.”
“Not without process.”
“Did she know that?”
He shook his head.
“Not really.”
I sat back down.
The room suddenly felt too small.
“How many people did she refer?”
“Mariana.”
“How many?”
“Maybe five or six over the last two years.”
My stomach turned.
“Were any hired?”
“Two.”
“Employees?”
“One temporary dispatcher and one outside mechanic.”
“And vendors?”
“No.”
“Until Tomás.”
“I didn’t approve Grupo Marea as a preferred vendor.”
“But you approved emergency payments.”
“Some.”
“Why?”
“Because we had a warehouse bottleneck and the goods had to move.”
“Who recommended them?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation was answer enough.
“Your mother.”
“Indirectly.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“What does indirectly mean?”
“Tomás called me and said he knew a company with available trucks.”
“After Teresa introduced him to someone.”
“Yes.”
“Someone you still can’t name.”
“Yes.”
“And then when payments started looking wrong, you kept it quiet.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him for a long time.
“Why?”
He pressed his thumb hard against the cracked nail.
“Because Tomás said if I made noise, my mother could get dragged into it.”
The sentence settled between us.
I felt something inside me shift.
Not break.
Shift.
“What exactly did he threaten?”
“He said she had signed documents.”
“What documents?”
“He wouldn’t send them.”
“Did you ask her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She said she signed some introductions and expense acknowledgments.”
“What is an introduction?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t know.”
He stood again, suddenly angry.
“I have spent three weeks trying to figure out whether my mother is stupid, complicit, or being used.”
“And you decided I didn’t need to know.”
“I decided I needed facts before I walked into your office and told you my family might be stealing from your company.”
“Our company.”
He laughed bitterly.
“No.”
I went still.
He looked at me.
“It’s yours.”
“That’s not what you said when you joined.”
“That was before I spent four years hearing everyone call me your husband before they called me anything else.”
There it was.
Not an excuse.
Something uglier and sadder.
Resentment.
He looked ashamed the moment it was spoken.
I let the silence sit.
“Did you cover anything up?”
“No.”
“Did you delete anything?”
“No.”
“Did you alter records?”
“No.”
“Did you warn Tomás?”
He hesitated.
My chest tightened.
“Alejandro.”
“I told him there was going to be scrutiny.”
“When?”
“Last Friday.”
I closed my eyes.
Daniel had been right.
“Why?”
“I wanted him to send me whatever he had before audit got involved.”
“You warned a conflicted party about an internal review.”
“I was trying to get evidence.”
“You gave him time to destroy it.”
“I know.”
“No, you know now.”
“I knew it was a risk then.”
“Then why did you do it?”
He slammed his palm against the table.
“Because he said he had something with my mother’s signature on it.”
The glass beside me jumped.
Neither of us moved.
“I panicked,” he said.
At least that was honest.
I got up and walked to the locked study drawer upstairs.
When I came back, I placed the envelope on the table.
Alejandro stared at it.
“What’s that?”
I slid the receipt toward him.
He unfolded it.
His face drained before he reached the handwriting on the back.
“Where did you get this?”
“Under your mother’s plate.”
He read the four words again.
Then a third time.
“That date.”
“Yes.”
“She told me she was in Cuernavaca that day.”
I watched him carefully.
“With who?”
“Lucía.”
“Was she?”
“I don’t know.”
He took out his phone.
I put my hand over it.
“Don’t call anyone.”
He looked at me.
“Why?”
“Because from this moment forward, we stop warning people.”
He stared at my hand on his phone.
Then at the receipt.
Slowly, he nodded.
For the first time that night, he looked less like my husband and more like a man who understood that tomorrow might not merely cost him his job.
It might force him to find out who his family had been when he was not looking.
Alejandro stayed at the table long after the screen of his phone went dark.
He did not ask to see the receipt again.
He just kept looking at the place where it had been.
Finally he said, “I need to tell you something else.”
I folded my arms.
“Then tell me.”
“There’s a second phone.”
I stared at him.
“Whose?”
“My mother’s.”
“What do you mean, a second phone?”
“She has the one everybody knows.”
He rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger.
“And another one she says is for emergencies.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“That sounds useful tonight.”
“I’ve seen it twice.”
“Where?”
“At her apartment.”
I waited.
“And?”
“And once in Tomás’s car.”
The room seemed to tilt by a degree.
“When?”
“About a month ago.”
“You saw your mother’s private phone in Tomás’s car and didn’t think that mattered?”
“At the time I didn’t know there was anything to connect.”
“You knew he was trying to get work through her.”
“I knew he was always trying to get something.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
He rubbed his face.
“I told myself she left it there.”
May you like
“Did you ask her?”
“She said yes.”
