I also started writing down memories, not because I wanted evidence for a lawyer but because I was frightened of losing the years that had been good. I wrote about the first time Sabrina met my mother and accidentally called her Lorraine before being invited to. I wrote about a snowstorm when we sat in the kitchen playing cards by candlelight after the power failed. I wrote about the day we signed the papers for the house and carried the keys around all evening as though they were medals.
Then I made another list, one I had avoided. I wrote down what had changed over the last year: the canceled plans, the dinners eaten alone, the conversations cut short, the nights when asking where she was felt like walking toward an argument. I didn't write it to prove I should have known. I wrote it to remind myself that my loneliness had been real, too, even before the hotel gave it a name.
In December, Ellison & Pike asked Sabrina and Colin to provide formal statements about travel expenses and their undisclosed personal relationship. That was how I learned the firm had policies about reporting relationships where one employee could influence another's promotion, assignments, or expense approvals. Colin oversaw accounts that affected Sabrina's performance evaluations. Their conduct created questions not only about inappropriate expenses but about whether other employees had been treated fairly while the relationship remained hidden.
A representative from the firm's compliance office contacted Rebecca to ask whether I would confirm that Lawson & Torres had not received payments connected to a particular hospitality project. I supplied a brief written statement through counsel. I did not accuse anybody of an offense I couldn't prove. I confirmed only that no proposal had been approved, no work completed, and no money received by my company under the project number they provided.
Later Janelle Price told Rebecca the review had identified expenses that should not have been billed to a client account, and that the company would take appropriate steps. She gave no confidential personnel details, and I didn't ask for them. I had already learned that knowing more was not the same thing as feeling better. Some facts were necessary for protecting my finances; the rest belonged to the people charged with evaluating them.
Sabrina lost the management assignment she had worked toward for years. She called me after the decision, breathless with anger, insisting Colin had used his influence to shift responsibility onto her. I was willing to believe he might have tried. I also remembered her admission that she had known the rooms were being booked improperly.
"You can challenge anything that's unfair through your own lawyer," I told her. "But I can't testify that you didn't know something you told me you knew."
"You used to be on my side."
"I used to think being on your side meant protecting you from everyone else's judgment," I answered. "I don't think it should ever have meant protecting either of us from the truth."