WHAT'S WRONG WTH DADDY

From the other side of the door, I hear a muffled voice call, “Go away.”

“Please, Nicole. I was wrong to fire you. My dad lied to me, said you’d betrayed me and told him everything about our arrangement.”

There’s silence on the other side of the door.

I hold my breath.

I hear footsteps on the other side of the door, and then she yanks it open. Nicole’s wearing old, stained sweatpants and a mustard yellow sweater. Her hair’s a tangled mess. She’s got dark circles under her eyes, and not a lick of makeup. Objectively, she looks horrible.

And yet, the sight of her is such a relief, I grip the side of the doorframe to keep from doing something crazy, like reaching for her, or falling to my knees and begging.

“Why would you believe anything your dad said about me?” she demands. “Don’t you know me at all?”

When she says it like that, the shame races through me. “I’m sorry. It was the pressure of the board vote. And he had the napkin. He said the thing I feared the most. And I...I believed h