Chapter 6: The Complaint
Daniel set his phone on the table face-down.
"Who filed it?" he asked.
Nobody answered, because nobody at the table had done it.
"One of the neighbors," I said.
"Or one of our guests.
Fifty people were standing outside that gate, Daniel.
Any one of them could have recorded it."
"Recorded it." He said the words slowly.
"You work for the city administration.
A public servant.
Standing outside his family home while his mother publicly humiliated his fiancée in front of witnesses." I picked up my binder.
"Someone decided that was worth reporting."
"This could cost me my position."
"I know."
"Emily." His voice dropped.
"Did you file it?"
I looked at him steadily.
"No," I said.
"I didn't."
It was the truth.
I had been in the car before I thought of anything except getting back to Los Angeles.
Margaret pushed her chair back.
"This is what happens," she said, looking at me.
"This is exactly what I was afraid of.
You come into this family and everything falls apart."
"Margaret." Victor's voice was quiet and final.
"You locked a gate on your son's wedding day because you were afraid of a legal document.
Everything that is falling apart right now fell apart because of that decision.
Not because of Emily."
She turned to him.
"Don't defend her in my house."
"It's not your house." He said it without cruelty.
Just fact.
"That's the entire problem."
She stood up and walked out of the dining room.
Her footsteps went up the stairs.
A door closed.
The three of us sat at the table.
Daniel picked up his phone again and read the message a second time.
"A formal review," he said.
"If they find cause, it goes to the ethics board."
"Then you go to the review and you tell the truth," I said.
"The truth makes me look worse."
"Lying to an ethics board makes you look worse than that."
He set the phone down again.
He rubbed his face with both hands.
"I should have stopped her," he said.
"At the gate.
I know that.
I knew it the second she brought out that chain and I just — I froze.
I didn't want a fight with her in front of everyone."
"So you let her have the fight with me instead."
"Yes." The word came out bare.
No defense attached to it.
I waited.
"I've been doing that my whole life," he said.
"Letting her have the fight with whoever was in front of her so it wouldn't be with me." He looked at the table.
"I thought you were strong enough to handle it.
That sounds terrible now that I'm saying it out loud."
"It is terrible."
"I know."
Victor stood up quietly and carried his documents to the kitchen counter.
He gave us space without leaving the room.
"The review might not go badly," I said.
"If you go in honestly, if you explain what happened and take responsibility for your part in it, there's a chance they see it as a personal matter that spilled into public view.
People understand family situations."
"And if they don't?"
"Then you deal with that.
But you don't lie your way through a government ethics review, Daniel.
That's the one thing that turns a bad day into a career-ending one."
He nodded slowly.
Victor turned from the counter.
"There's one more thing," he said.
"And I want to say this now, before we get into attorneys and notaries and repayment schedules."
We both looked at him.
"I found something when I was going through the old paperwork on this house.
Something that changes the picture a little." He set a photograph on the table.
Old, slightly faded, the colors of a different decade.
"This was taken twenty-three years ago.
Before I left."
I looked at the photograph.
A woman I didn't recognize was standing in front of the house.
Younger than Margaret.
Dark hair.
Smiling at the camera with the ease of someone who lived there.
"Who is this?" I asked.
Victor sat back down.
"Her name is Carla," he said.
"She's Margaret's younger sister."
Daniel looked up sharply.
May you like
"I didn't know Mom had a sister."
"That," Victor said, "is the part of the story Margaret has never told you."
