Juanita: And what would you say to the people who say “like father, like son”？ Who put you in the same boat as him, as someone primarily motivated by money?
Cam: I’d say they have it completely, one hundred percent back-ass-ward. Unlike my father, I wasn’t motivated by money, but by the way money eased the weight of my responsibility to the people I love. Jade and the kids, my mother. Every single thing I did was for them, to feed and clothe and take care of them. I would have never left them in the dust to fend for themselves. The last thing I ever would have done is walk away.
Juanita: And yet you took your wife’s jewelry without her knowledge or permission, essentially theft. You pawned some of her most precious pieces and replaced them with fakes so she wouldn’t know.
Cam: And then I used that money to pay my children’s tuition. For Beatrix’s violin lessons and the homeowner association fees on my mother’s condo. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not proud of what I did, but at least I stuck around. I did it to save my family the heartache of losing everything including their friends—because make no mistake. A bankruptcy is a surefire way of learning who’s in your life because they want what you have. I was trying to save them from that.
Juanita: By being the polar opposite of your father.
Cam: Exactly.
Juanita: And yet, just like your father, you’ve also been accused of underhanded business practices. Things like employing undocumented workers and paying them under the table, for example.
Cam: Have you ever been in a restaurant kitchen? Something like 95 percent of the folks working the cleanup lines are Latino. They are the hardest workers doing the dirtiest jobs. Lasky’s policy was to hire only the ones who had individual taxpayer identification numbers, which means they could pay the IRS without alerting ICE. Whether or not they actually filed is none of my business.
Juanita: But were they legal?
Cam: Also none of my business. And look, judge me all you want, but I did what it took to keep my family and business afloat.
Juanita: So again, like father, like son.
Cam: Well, Juanita, I guess it’s true what they say. In the end we all become our parents.
J A D E
4:47 p.m.
It happens so fast, if I blinked I would have missed it.
Beatrix in exaggerated tiptoe, slipping out the open doorway of the playroom into the hall. Back hunched, arms stretched out for balance, legs spread wide so the frilly cuffs of her shorts don’t brush together when she walks. It’s a Looney Tunes version of a tiptoe, skillful in its absolute silence, a careful and precise movement she’s clearly practiced. It makes me wonder how many times she’s done this while Cam and I were reading or watching TV downstairs, oblivious to our daughter sneaking about above our heads. Dozens, probably.
She swings her head to the right, peering down the long hallway that leads to the kids’ bedrooms. It’s the direction Baxter and the masked man just disappeared down, only a few seconds earlier. Baxter was moving fast, his face strained with hurry, one hand gripping his bottom in a way that typically means he’s going to need a change of pants. He was in too much of a panic to notice me sitting across the hall, strapped to a chair, and the man didn’t look over, either, though I didn’t miss his grimace.
I can hear them now, the low murmur of voices muffled by a door and two walls. Baxter’s bathroom, which is good news since it’s the farthest away. The last door at the end of the hallway, tucked around not one but two corners. Assuming the man is waiting just outside the bathroom door, there’s still a wall between him and Beatrix.
Beatrix turns for the stairs, and almost by accident, her gaze lands on mine.
She flinches so hard, her sneakers squeak on the hardwood floor. I wince at the sound, and my heart seizes, then trips into high gear. I hold my breath and listen for signs of someone coming.
Beatrix must be thinking the same thing, because she looks in the direction of the voices, and I watch her face for a reaction. My daughter is like me, an open book. Everything she ever thinks is telegraphed straight to her face, as easy to read as blinking neon letters. If the masked man is bearing down the hallway, coming for her, I’ll see it on Beatrix’s expression.
But her face doesn’t change. Her back slumps in a silent sigh of relief, and she looks back.
Heart pounding, I study my daughter from top to toe. I take in her dry eyes, count her fingers, search her skin for blood or bruises. The bow on the hem of her pink polka-dot shirt has come untied, and her shorts are rumpled at the crotch from sitting, but there’s no rips or bloodstains. Her hair is pillow-mussed, that cowlick I’m always trying to wrangle into submission pushing the hair high on the left side of her crown, but otherwise she looks fine. Frightened, but fine.