Chương 7
He frowned.
“I thought you said to keep employment separate.”
“I said not to contaminate one dispute with another. Your mother may have done that for us.”
Priya slid the attorney’s letter aside.
“Has the audit expanded?”
Daniel nodded.
“Expense approvals. Vendor invoices. Executive office procurement.”
“Why procurement?”
“They’re reviewing whether I favored vendors connected to friends.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Any chance something embarrassing turns up?”
Daniel thought.
“I approved office furniture from my college roommate’s company.”
Emily looked at him.
“You never told me that.”
“It was competitive.”
Priya raised an eyebrow.
Daniel sighed.
“Fine. It’ll look stupid.”
“Stupid is survivable,” Priya said. “Hidden isn’t.”
She asked permission to contact independent board counsel if the audit began touching materials relevant to Margaret.
Daniel hesitated.
Emily noticed.
There was the old instinct.
Family first.
Handle it internally.
Don’t embarrass anyone.
He looked at Emily.
She did not help him.
Finally he said, “Do it.”
Three days later, Mercer Development’s internal auditor found a charge for $1,860 to a document-design firm in Philadelphia.
The expense had been submitted through the chair’s executive office.
The description read: confidential family presentation materials.
That alone proved nothing.
The vendor invoice made it worse.
Reproduction of diagnostic-style report template, two-page format, custom identifiers, rush delivery.
Daniel received the invoice because the audit now included the chair’s office.
He did not call Margaret.
He called Priya.
Priya called independent board counsel.
Independent board counsel called nobody for six hours.
Daniel spent those six hours pacing.
Emily graded essays at the kitchen table.
She had returned to work remotely two afternoons a week to prepare for the spring semester.
Her juniors had written papers on The Crucible.
The timing felt aggressively unsubtle.
Daniel walked past her for perhaps the twentieth time.
“Sit down.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“I am nervous.”
“You can be nervous in a chair.”
He sat.
She marked a sentence fragment.
Daniel watched.
“What’s that kid arguing?”
“That social fear destroys evidence standards.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Can I read it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Student privacy.”
He gave her a look.
Emily kept grading.
A minute later he said, “Do you think I should resign?”
Her pen stopped.
“From the company?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that would be emotional.”
He frowned.
“You told me not to let my mother control my job.”
“Exactly.”
“You think leaving means she controls it?”
“I think leaving today because she frightened you means she picked the timing.”
Daniel looked away.
Emily capped her pen.
“If you decide you don’t want to work there anymore, leave. But decide when you’re not trying to win a fight.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “I used to think you hated conflict.”
“I do.”
“You’re annoyingly good at it.”
“I’m not good at it.”
“You threatened a board chair.”
“With a duck burp cloth.”
“That’s what made it powerful.”
She threw the pen cap at him.
He smiled.
The phone rang.
Independent board counsel.
The conversation lasted forty-one minutes.
Afterward Daniel sat without moving.
Emily waited.
Finally he said, “They’re opening a review into her use of company resources.”
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“What does that mean for you?”
“They paused my audit.”
“Good?”
“I don’t know.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“They want the recording.”
“Do we give it?”
“Priya says yes, but only through her.”
Emily nodded.
Daniel looked at her.
“They want your messages too.”
Her chest went cold.
“All of them?”
“The ones with my mother.”
Emily looked toward the laptop.
There were messages about breastfeeding.
Her marriage.
Sex.
Money.
A postpartum infection.
One night at 3:00 a.m. when she had told Margaret she felt like a bad mother because Lucy wouldn’t stop crying.
Margaret had answered kindly that night.
That was almost worse.
“No,” Emily said.
Daniel blinked.
“No?”
“I don’t want strangers reading them.”
“They could establish a pattern.”
“I know.”
“The board needs context.”
“I know.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
Emily looked at him.
There it was again.
We.
As if shared purpose meant shared ownership.
“They’re my messages.”
Daniel sat back.
“I’m not saying they aren’t.”
“You just asked what we’re supposed to do.”
“Because this affects both of us.”
“They happened to me.”
Daniel went quiet.
Emily felt guilty immediately.
That annoyed her too.
She stood and walked to the sink.
The white plate was in the drying rack.
She had almost thrown it away after Margaret left.
Instead she had washed off the jam.
A normal plate had become an object she noticed every time she entered the room.
She hated that.
“I’ll give them the relevant ones,” she said.
Daniel did not answer.
“The paternity comments. The money. The report. Not everything.”
“Okay.”
She turned.
He looked hurt.
She almost apologized.
Didn’t.
That night they fought.
Not loudly.
They had never been good at loud.
Daniel said he felt as if every mistake he had made in the last year was being reinterpreted as evidence against him.
Emily said maybe that was because he had spent years treating Margaret’s behavior as weather.
Daniel said he had been trying to keep peace.
Emily asked for whom.
He had no answer.
She said, “Exactly.”
He slept in the guest room.
At 2:17 a.m., Lucy woke crying.
Daniel reached the nursery before Emily did.
She stopped in the doorway.
He had Lucy against his shoulder.
His hair stuck up on one side.
His T-shirt was twisted.
Lucy’s crying softened to hiccups.
Daniel saw Emily.
Neither spoke.
He rocked the baby.
Emily leaned against the doorframe.
After a while she said, “You put the diaper on backward.”
Daniel looked down.
“I did not.”
“The tabs are in the back.”
He stared.
“How?”
“I’ve been asking that for five months.”
He laughed quietly.
Emily walked in.
Together they fixed the diaper.
Neither apologized.
But Daniel went back to their bedroom afterward.
May you like
The board review widened.
The document-design vendor produced emails showing that Margaret’s executive assistant, Celia Ramos, had sent the company a sample paternity report found online and requested a new version “for a private illustrative exercise.”
