Chapter 3: The Apology That Wasn’t
For a moment after Elena spoke, all I could hear was Dad setting his screwdriver on the kitchen counter.
Mara answered before I did.
“Is anyone in immediate danger, Ms. Ruiz?”
“I don’t know,” Elena said. “That’s why I called.”
“Then we need to handle this carefully. Don’t send us the report tonight, and don’t change the access request. I’ll arrange a documented way to review what you’re describing.”
Elena agreed to speak with Mara again the next morning. She would say no more about the equipment over the phone.
When the call ended, Dad looked toward the cabinet he had just repaired.
“Equipment already in service,” he repeated.
“She hasn’t shown us anything yet.”
“I know.”
He picked up the screwdriver, then put it down again. For thirty-seven years, a sentence like Elena’s had meant something concrete to him: a person waiting behind a stuck elevator door, a technician trying to find the fault, a building manager wanting an answer faster than anyone could safely give one.
My phone lit up with another message from Fiona.
Please. Five minutes.
I had ignored three calls since we left the hotel. Ignoring this one would have been easier than answering it, but I wanted her to hear a decision from me, not through her mother or a roomful of guests.
I typed back: You can come by Dad’s house. We can talk outside.
Dad read my face.
“Fiona?”
I nodded.
“I can go get the hinge screws I meant to buy,” he said.
“You don’t have to leave your own house.”
“I know.” He took his keys from the hook. “And she doesn’t have to apologize to me because she wants something from you.”
That was all he said. He changed out of his work shirt before going, though it was the same shirt he wore to the hardware store every other week. I wondered if seeing Fiona still made him think about the suit.
Twenty minutes later, her car stopped at the curb. She stepped out wearing the cream coat she had worn to our rehearsal dinner. The sight of it hurt in a way I hadn’t prepared for. Yesterday I had known how she took her coffee, where she kept spare keys, what song made her cry when she thought nobody was watching.
I still knew those things. I just didn’t know why I had believed they told me enough.
Fiona came up the walk and stopped when she saw me on the porch.
“Is your dad inside?”
“He went out.”
She glanced at the empty driveway.
“I wasn’t coming to upset him.”
“Good.”
“I came because we can still fix this, Ethan. My mother was awful. I told her so.”
“You told her she was terrible.”
Fiona frowned. “Yes.”
“And then you laughed.”
A car passed behind her, tires whispering over the street. Fiona folded her arms against the cold.
“I was embarrassed. Sometimes people laugh when they’re embarrassed.”
“You told me not to make a scene because your father had investors there.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?”
She looked past me, toward the front door.
“My mother gets sharp when she’s had too much champagne. You know that. I thought if we could get through dinner, I could talk to her privately afterward.”
“She insulted Dad in front of five hundred people. What would a private conversation have done for him?”
“I could have made her apologize.”
I had imagined Fiona coming here angry. I hadn’t expected how tired I would feel hearing her offer to arrange my father’s dignity at a more convenient hour.
“Tell me what he heard,” I said.
“What?”
“Dad was standing near our table. Tell me what he heard at dinner.”
Fiona’s arms loosened. For the first time since she arrived, she looked at me instead of the house.
“He heard Mom say he came from the gutter.”
“And then?”
“He heard me laugh.”
“And?”
Her eyes filled, but she held my gaze.
“He heard me ask you to be quiet because Dad’s investors were there.”
I waited. She looked down at the porch step.
“I made them more important than him,” she said. “I did.”
The admission didn’t repair anything. It mattered that she had finally said it without putting her mother’s name in front of it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I believed she was. I also remembered how close she had been sitting when she laughed.
“Have you told Dad that?”
“I wanted to. I thought maybe you could ask him—”
“No. If you decide to apologize, that’s between you and him. He doesn’t owe you an audience.”
She nodded, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.
Then she drew a breath and straightened her coat. I knew that gesture. It was what she did before a difficult call at work.
“Richard wants to talk to you,” she said.
“About what?”
“Everything. The wedding. This situation with your company. He heard your people requested Ashford records.”
“Mara requested a meeting under the agreement.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me you were looking into Dad’s business?”
“We aren’t discussing confidential business.”
“I’m his daughter.”
“I know.”
“And I was going to be your wife.”
I glanced at her bare left hand. My platinum band was still on a table at the Grand Belmont. Hers was gone, too.
“That isn’t something we can use to negotiate,” I said. “The engagement is over. I won’t trade an explanation about work for another conversation about us.”
Her face tightened. “You think I came here to trade?”
“I think you came here hoping one apology could take us back to yesterday morning.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. From across the street came the rattle of a trash can being pulled up a driveway. Ordinary life, continuing without our permission.
“I did love you,” she said.
“I loved you, too.”
That seemed to make it worse for both of us.
Fiona went back down the walk. Before she opened her car door, she turned.
“Your dad shouldn’t have had to stand there,” she said.
“No,” I answered. “He shouldn’t.”
After she drove away, I called Mara. I told her Fiona had mentioned Richard’s knowledge of our records request, but that I hadn’t discussed Elena, the access log, or the call.
“Good,” Mara said. “We need to establish what the reports actually show. Keep the personal and company conversations separate.”
I watched Dad’s empty driveway.
“I’m trying.”
When Dad returned, he carried a small paper bag of screws and two sandwiches. He set one in front of me without asking how the visit had gone.
“She said she laughed,” I told him.
He sat across the kitchen table. “I heard her.”
“She said she was sorry.”
Dad peeled back the sandwich wrapper. His hands were steady.
“Maybe she is,” he said. “You don’t have to decide what that means today.”
I went home before dark. My apartment still held the things Fiona had left there: a paperback facedown on the arm of the couch, a blue mug in the drying rack. I washed the mug and put it on the shelf. It was the only thing I could think to do with it.
Around seven, my phone rang. Fiona.
I nearly let it go to voicemail. Then I remembered Elena saying equipment already in service, and Richard wanting to speak to me about our records request. I answered.
“I’m at the office,” Fiona said. Her voice sounded thin through the speaker. “I’m not calling about us.”
“Okay.”
“I need to ask you something. Has anyone told you there’s a quality warning on the elevator-control line?”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“I can’t tell you what anyone may have told me. Why are you asking?”
There was a pause. In the background, I heard a door close and the low hum of ventilation.
“I was pulling the briefing we gave investors last month,” she said. “The one my team sent after the product update. It says the affected units passed the full quality review. I wrote that sentence.”
“Did you verify it?”
“I read the approval summary Richard’s office provided. I didn’t read the underlying test records.”
She said it plainly, without asking me to tell her that everybody did the same thing.
“What changed?” I asked.
“There’s an internal warning linked to that briefing. It was in the packet, and I overlooked it. The warning still shows as open.”
“Have you asked your quality team?”
“I asked Richard first.”
I closed my eyes. “What did he say?”
“He said the system doesn’t always update when a warning is resolved. He said it was an administrative issue and I should leave it alone.”
“That may be true. I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
I sat down at the kitchen table. “Fiona, don’t send me company files. If you have a concern, take it to someone who can examine the records independently through the right process. Mara can speak with your counsel about a review.”
“I’m not offering you files.” Her voice dropped. “I’m looking at the warning now because I told investors there was nothing to worry about.”
A faint click came over the line, then another. She seemed to be opening the entries while we spoke.
“What are you checking?” I asked.
“The clearance record. I wanted to see what Richard meant.”
I waited. I could hear her breathing, but she didn’t answer.
“Fiona?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m looking at the test results for the same batch.”
May you like
The silence that followed was long enough for me to hear the refrigerator motor start behind me.
“The warning says the batch was cleared on the twelfth,” she said. “But its test results weren’t recorded until the fourteenth.”
