“Lies. I have nothing. I am your servant. Your mother’s servant. I clean her floors, wash her clothes, cook her food. And while I do all that, you are with Valerie.”
Robert stood up so fast that his chair fell backward.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know everything, Robert. I know you have a mistress. I know you pay for an apartment for her. I know you use the money my mother sent me to keep her while I break my hands cleaning your house.”
“Brenda, I can explain.”
“I don’t want explanations. Not anymore.”
Carol intervened with a venomous voice.
“This is your fault.” She pointed at me. “You put these ideas in her head. You are manipulating her against her own family.”
“Her family?” I laughed without humor. “You are not her family. I am her family. And the only manipulation here is the one you exerted over her for years.”
“We gave her a roof over her head. We gave her stability.”
“You gave her slavery. You turned her into your unpaid employee. And the worst thing is that you did it so subtly that she thought that was love.”
Robert walked toward Brenda with open arms.
“My love, please. This is a misunderstanding. Your mother doesn’t understand how things work here. We love you. I love you.”
Brenda backed away.
“Don’t touch me, Robert. Don’t touch me. I don’t want you to ever touch me again.”
“You’re being irrational. Your mother brainwashed you.”
“My mother opened my eyes. There’s a difference.”
I pulled another envelope from the folder. They were the photographs of Robert with Valerie. I placed them on the table one by one.
“Explain this to her,” I said. “Explain why you were kissing another woman while your wife was cleaning your mother’s floor. Explain why you were paying for an apartment for your mistress with the money she gave you to save the company.”
Robert looked at the photographs, all color drained from his face.
“That… that is not what it looks like.”
“No? Then what is it?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not complicated,” Brenda said. “It’s betrayal. Plain and simple betrayal.”
Carol took the photographs and looked at them. For the first time since I met her, I saw something close to discomfort on her face.
“Robert, what is this?”
“Mom, I…”
“Do you have a mistress?”
“She’s not a mistress. She’s… she’s just someone who—”
“Someone who what? Someone who understands you better than your wife?”
Carol’s voice was ice.
“Do you know the scandal this could cause? Do you know what they would say at the club? In society?”
And there it was, the truth. Carol didn’t care about Brenda’s pain. She cared about the scandal, the appearance, what people would say.
“You no longer have a club,” I said. “You no longer have a society. You no longer have anything but debts and lies.”
Carol looked at me with pure hatred.
“This is revenge. That’s what this is. You came here to take revenge because your daughter married someone better than you.”
“I came here to save my daughter. And yes, as a bonus, to enact justice. But it is not revenge. Revenge would be cruel. I am just being fair.”
“Fair? Taking our house away is fair?”
“It wasn’t your house. It belonged to the bank. And you couldn’t pay for it. I could.”
“Then sell it. Sell it and keep the money. But let us live here until we find something else.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
