My father stood and asked him to leave.
Thomas protested that my father was overreacting and that one bad family dinner shouldn’t ruin a man’s future.
My father looked at him for a long moment and said, ‘A man who cannot show basic humanity in private has no business asking the public to trust his judgment in positions of power.’
Margaret came the next morning with a fruit basket and a new voice.
Suddenly I was dear, precious, fragile.
She cried in the hallway and said she never meant the word servant literally.
She said families said unfortunate things under pressure.
She said Thomas had worked too hard to lose everything over a misunderstanding.
I asked the nurse to escort her out.
A little later, my father stepped into the hallway and made the phone call that ended Thomas’s career.
Thomas had been under final consideration for a court-appointed advisory post that would have fast-tracked him into a much more powerful legal circle.
