I’d made it through the week without being fired. Barely. In the hours and first days after meeting with Melinda Darley, Miles was monosyllabic when he spoke to me at all. He continued to send me to the worst assignments, pointless meetings, random panels. He, or maybe Bo, had told L.K. about what happened, and as truly sympathetic people are wont to be, she absorbed this upsetting news by becoming upset herself. So unfair, Daisy, she’d said. Another piece of terrible gossip leveled against you. She’d promised not to repeat it. It didn’t serve Miles for this to spread anyway.

Though L.K. thought I was being treated badly, it was actually the reverse, and then some. I’d put Miles in jeopardy with my brilliant little plan, so desperate to get my job back, I’d wounded the person and the causes I most wanted to support.

When it felt safe, after the worst of Miles’s anger had dimmed, I had remorsefully, tentatively brought to him my idea for Literacy Week. It was met with a grunt of approval, and a gradual easing of tensions around the office. Still, my nerves made me feel like I’d never sleep again. Midnight on Saturday found me in my tattered terry bathrobe, one I’d had since college and couldn’t bring myself to throw away, watching cable news. Even at this late hour, anchors and pundits were chewing over Melinda’s upcoming confirmation hearings; a contentious nominee had practically everyone on air salivating.

The fact that Melinda Darley, of all people, was aware my father had stolen for me was especially brutal. Had she known when we ran into her at the graveyard presser? Had others? While I trusted L.K., Bo, and Miles, I didn’t have the same confidence that Melinda Darley’s office would remain close-lipped. Putting my faith in her and her staff would be like trusting a stool with two legs to hold my weight.

But as much as I resented Melinda Darley, she’d brought something into stark relief: even though she’d never admit it, she and my father were remarkably similar. They both threw money at problems, flouted decency and sometimes laws, all the while thinking they were helping their children, and by extension themselves, burnishing their reputations. At least, that must’ve been Gregory’s motivation.

When Bo had asked me for the truth, all I’d said was I don’t know. What I meant was, I don’t know what to say. If I came clean about what my father had done, I would dislocate the lives of my mother and sister further, lose my job, my credibility, everything I’d tried to rebuild in the wake of my father’s death.