Chapter 2 - What Margaret Wanted
“Dad, please don’t show Mom that page.”
Daniel kept his voice low, but Vanessa looked up from the far end of the conference table.
I moved my hand off the line bearing his name.
“I promised your mother I’d tell her what was happening.”
“I know. Just give me time to explain.”
“You’ve had time,” I said.
Vanessa came toward us. “Explain what?”
Daniel straightened. For a moment, I thought he might finally answer both of us. Instead, he looked at the proposal.
“I need to talk to my dad.”
“You can talk in front of me,” Vanessa said. “It’s my family’s offer.”
“And it’s our hotel,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to see Margaret. Nothing gets decided tonight.”
Vanessa glanced toward the ballroom doors. Beyond them, the music had started again, though I could no longer tell what song was playing. Three hundred people were being asked to dance as if they hadn’t just watched my wife beg her son for help.
“I’m going to call my father,” Vanessa said.
“You can call him. Don’t tell him we’re considering the offer.”
Her face tightened. “I wasn’t going to.”
I put the papers back in the envelope. Daniel followed me into the hall but stopped when I turned toward the elevators.
“Stay here,” I told him. “I’ll let you know if your mother wants to see you.”
He looked as though he might argue. Then he nodded.
Upstairs, Elena Ruiz opened the suite door before I could knock. She had helped Margaret away from the reception and stayed with her while I was in the conference room.
“Is she all right?” I asked.
“She’ll tell you,” Elena said gently.
Margaret sat on the couch with a glass of water beside her. She had taken off my jacket and put on the cardigan we’d brought for the ride home. A folded towel rested across her knees. Her wig was nowhere in sight.
She looked tired. She also looked directly at me.
“Did anyone take pictures?”
The question caught me off guard. I had been preparing to tell her about Daniel.
“The photographer was near the stage,” I said. “I don’t know what he took.”
“Please tell him I don’t want any photographs of me from tonight. Not just the stage. Any of them.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And ask Elena whether the hotel can keep staff from sharing anything.”
Elena nodded. “I can speak to the team tonight. I can’t control what guests do with their phones.”
“I know,” Margaret said. “I’m not asking you to promise that.”
For the first time since the stage, I understood how much work Margaret was doing simply to decide what she could ask for. I sat in the chair across from her rather than beside her, where I would have been tempted to put an arm around her before she wanted it.
“Would you like me to stay?” Elena asked.
“Could you give us a little while? Thank you for coming up with me.”
Elena squeezed her shoulder and left.
Margaret took a drink of water. Her hand was steady now.
“I heard people outside the lounge,” she said. “Was the hotel the reason Vanessa wanted to talk to you?”
“Yes. Her family’s investment firm sent us an offer to buy it. She worked on the proposal.”
“Did she know it was ours?”
“She says she didn’t. Daniel hadn’t told her.”
Margaret closed her eyes briefly. “You showed them?”
“The company record. Vanessa knows that we control Bennett House Holdings and that it owns the Grand Ashton with the other investors.”
“And the envelope?”
I laid it on the coffee table between us. She looked at it, then back at me.
“Tell me all of it, Richard. Don’t make me pull it out of you because you think I’ve had enough tonight.”
I deserved that.
“Three weeks ago, our attorney called about the Whitmore proposal. It used projections she believed were confidential. We hadn’t provided them to the Whitmores. She wanted us to find out where they came from before we responded.”
“And you brought the papers to the wedding?”
“I brought them to ask Daniel privately. I hadn’t decided when.” I paused. “The envelope also has the draft of the shares we talked about giving him. We never signed it. Nothing was transferred.”
Margaret’s gaze went to the envelope.
“Why did you put that in there?”
“I was looking through everything after the attorney’s call. I thought Daniel might ask whether the gift changed anything.”
“Does it?”
“We haven’t made the gift. It’s still a decision for the two of us.”
She picked up the towel from her lap, smoothed one corner, and put it down again.
“At our kitchen table, I asked whether he might like helping with the hotel,” she said. “I didn’t ask because I thought he’d earned part of it. I wanted to know what kind of life he wanted.”
“I remember.”
“You stopped talking about it after that call.”
“I should have told you why. I didn’t have proof Daniel had done anything, and I didn’t want to bring a suspicion into the house while you were going through treatment.”
“I was already living in the house,” Margaret said. “I would rather have known what worried you.”
There was no defense worth offering. I told her I was sorry.
She drew a breath. “What did you find tonight?”
“One source page in the proposal has Daniel’s name on it.”
Her eyes stayed on mine.
“He asked me not to show you,” I added.
“He asked you.”
“Yes.”
Margaret held out her hand. I gave her the marked page. She read it slowly, once and then again, before setting it face down.
“Call the attorney,” she said. “I want to hear what she knows, not what we’re afraid happened.”
Our attorney, Simone Harris, answered on the third ring. I put the phone on speaker and told her Margaret was with me. Margaret asked the first question.
“When you called Richard three weeks ago, did you know Daniel was involved?”
“No,” Simone said. “His name was on a source list, but that doesn’t establish what he gave anyone. I told Richard the proposal appeared to use internal projections we had not authorized anyone to share. We needed to verify the source.”
“Were they figures the Whitmores could have found somewhere else?”
“Some of the broader assumptions might be estimated from public information. Other figures appear to match working forecasts prepared for the hotel. I can’t tell you tonight which documents, if any, left your control.”
Margaret leaned forward.
“Was the offer accepted by anyone?”
“No. Vanessa signed her family firm’s proposal. You and Richard haven’t accepted it, and the draft gift to Daniel remains unsigned.”
Below us, a burst of applause rose through the floor. I wondered what the guests thought they were applauding now.
Simone asked whether we had spoken with Daniel about the source list.
“Not fully,” I said.
“Then keep the documents together. I’ll review the underlying records with you in the morning. For tonight, ask questions. Don’t accuse anyone of taking a particular file until we know.”
Margaret thanked her and ended the call.
“That warning wasn’t about what Vanessa did to me,” she said.
“No. Simone called about the figures. I didn’t know Vanessa would bring you onto that stage.”
“I know you didn’t.”
I wished I could have taken comfort from her believing me. Instead, I kept seeing Daniel beside the microphone, looking at the floor.
“We can go home,” I said. “I’ll have someone bring the car around the back.”
“In a little while.”
“Do you want to speak to Daniel?”
“I told myself I didn’t. But now I want to ask him one question.” She glanced at the page on the table. “Not with Vanessa here. And I don’t want you asking it for me.”
I called Daniel and told him he could come up alone. While we waited, Margaret asked me to contact the photographer in the morning, not at the reception. She didn’t want another person rushing into the suite to assure her they meant well.
When Daniel knocked, I opened the door. He was still wearing his wedding suit, his tie loosened. He saw the source page beside his mother and stopped.
“Mom.”
“Sit down,” she said.
He took the chair I had left. I stood near the window, close enough to hear, far enough not to crowd her.
Margaret didn’t pick up the page.
“Did you give Vanessa’s family numbers from the hotel?”
“Yes,” Daniel said.
It was the first answer he had given us all night without looking away.
“I sent figures to help them prepare the offer. I had access through the work I’d done with Dad. I didn’t ask permission to use them for this.”
“Did you tell Vanessa we owned the hotel?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He pressed his hands together. “I knew she’d think I was bringing her a deal because it was ours. I wanted her family to take my work seriously. I thought if they made a strong offer, I could talk to you both about it afterward.”
“You thought we’d thank you?” I asked.
“I thought you’d listen.”
“You could have asked us to listen before giving them anything.”
“I know.”
Margaret looked at him for a long moment. “I asked you for help tonight.”
Daniel’s face crumpled, but she went on before he could speak.
“I don’t want another apology right now. I want you to understand that I saw you there. Whatever happens with the hotel, I can’t stop seeing that because you wish I would.”
He nodded. Tears stood in his eyes. Margaret did not move to comfort him.
“You may leave after you answer your father’s questions,” she said. “I’m done for tonight.”
Daniel glanced toward the envelope. “There’s something else.”
May you like
I waited.
“The source list has a second page,” he said. “The copy in your envelope doesn’t.”
