Chapter 12 - The Papers on Television
The station cut away before Paula opened the folder.
I stood motionless beside Teresa as the screen switched to weather.
My divorce had been painful, but it had not been public entertainment.
Mom knew that.
She had listened to me cry during the last months of my marriage.
Now she was offering that pain to strangers as evidence against my competence.
Daniel called the station to request that it refrain from broadcasting private documents unrelated to any legitimate public concern.
The editor confirmed they would review the material before using it.
I made no statement about my marriage.
That evening Grandma called Paula herself.
I learned what happened from my father, who heard the conversation from the kitchen.
"If you use your daughter's grief as a weapon again," Ruth reportedly said, "you will not use my name to excuse it."
Mom accused her of choosing sides.
"I am choosing the truth," Grandma replied.
A few hours later, Ruth arrived at my house carrying a casserole.
She found my undecorated Christmas tree and the boxes of ornaments still beside the sofa.
"Your grandfather used to decorate everything too early," she said.
I smiled sadly.
"He would have hated this empty tree."
Together we hung the ornaments.
She told me about the year Grandpa secretly paid my first semester's tuition after my parents said a hospital filing job was no foundation for a future.
I had always thought the anonymous scholarship came from a local foundation.
"He asked me not to tell you," Ruth said.
"He wanted you to believe somebody in the world thought you worth investing in."
I reached for the star at the top of the tree.
My hands shook.
"He could have told me it was him."
"He wanted you to know the support was real even if you didn't know its name."
When the lights came on, the room looked like a home again.
Then my phone rang.
The hospital's security team had received a threatening message referencing a specific employee shift change.
The threat had to be assessed immediately.
The sender claimed to possess files from the cyberattack.
May you like
And attached to the message was my mother's private phone number.
