Chapter 5

Tomás the bartender came to get him at nine forty-five.

Dorian had not moved from the office since Marielle had left. The check was still on the desk in front of him, untouched, uncashed, seven years old, made out to Lena Ash for two hundred thousand dollars. She'd never cashed it. He'd never thought about her at all.

"Boss," Tomás said. "You need to come out to the floor."

Dorian's head snapped up. "What happened?"

"It's not a fight," Tomás said. "It's — there's a woman at the hostess stand. She's asking for you. She won't leave."

Dorian couldn't summon a clue. "That might be Lena. The boy's mother."

"Boss, the woman at the hostess stand is not Lena. She's older. Grey hair. She's — she's the one from the video." Tomás's face was pinched. "The book club lady. She's got a printout. She's holding it like — she keeps saying she needs to give it to you personally."

The dining room was still full, and every table turned when Dorian walked out of the kitchen in his burgundy chef's shirt, still damp from the rain, his hands shaking.

The woman in the grey cardigan was standing at the hostess stand, exactly where Tomás had said. She was holding a large envelope, and her phone was in her other hand, and she looked at him the way a judge looks at a defendant.

"Mr. Ash," she said. "My name is Margaret Ellis. I've been coming to this restaurant for twelve years, and I will not be coming back."

"Marta — "

"You don't know my name," she said. "You've never known my name. In twelve years, every third Thursday, I've sat at the same table in the corner, and you've walked past me a hundred times, and you've never once asked what I do, whether I have family, whether there's anything you should know about your own restaurant." She set the envelope down on the hostess stand. "This is a copy of my video. The one from earlier — the shove, the money, the boy. I've also sent it to the county health department, the city licensing bureau, and the local news station."

Dorian stared at her.

"I have one thing to say," Margaret Ellis said. "I was sitting at table nine when you pushed that woman out of your doorway. I watched you throw cash at her. I watched a six-year-old child stand in the rain at her side." Her voice was steady, unhurried, a schoolteacher's voice. "And then I watched you tell the woman who raised her son with your name and your grandfather's name — with no time to step forward, no money from you, no support of any kind from you — that she wasn't yours."