Chapter 7 - PLEASE SPEAK TO MANAGEMENT.
“Was she fired?” Andrew asked Martin.
“No one has said that.”
“Then what does your message mean?”
The venue manager paused. Andrew could hear a phone ringing somewhere behind him, the ordinary rhythm of a business that would host another wedding next weekend regardless of what had happened at this one.
“It means client communications go through me.”
“Did her schedule change?”
“I can't discuss personnel.”
Andrew looked at his notebook. He had written fired with a question mark. He crossed out the word and wrote assignment changed, reason unknown. It felt fussy, almost inadequate to the situation. It also kept him from turning suspicion into something he might repeat as fact.
“I'm not asking her to speak for the venue,” he said. “I'm asking what she saw.”
“And we've asked you to let us look into it.”
“Will you preserve the schedules and staff messages?”
“We received your email.”
“That isn't an answer.”
Martin sighed. “Yes. Relevant records will be retained.”
Andrew asked him to confirm it in writing. Martin said he would. Neither sounded pleased when the call ended.
Rosa returned Andrew's call during her break that afternoon. She spoke softly, with traffic behind her.
“Claire gave you my number?”
“Yes. Is this a good time?”
“I have eight minutes.”
He almost launched into the questions. Instead he asked whether she was comfortable talking and whether she wanted him to call another time.
“I'm comfortable telling you what I know,” she said. “I'm not comfortable losing Saturday work.”
She wasn't pleading. She was stating a condition of her life. Her weekday job covered most bills. Weekend catering filled the gaps. Her car needed tires before winter, and the school year had just started with its usual collection of fees and supplies.
Andrew could have paid for the tires. The thought arrived instantly, dressed up as generosity. He put it aside. Offering a witness money while asking for her account would complicate something that needed to remain clean, and it would insult the dignity with which she had just described her circumstances.
“I won't pay you for information,” he said. “And I won't ask you to say more than you remember.”
“Good. Because I wasn't going to.”
He liked her immediately.
She had been working the service corridor before the ceremony. She had seen Vanessa walking with Emily toward the laundry room. Emily carried the basket. Rosa had assumed they were looking for a place to fix the dress or use a mirror.
“Did you see the door shut?”
“No. I went into the kitchen.”
“Did you see anyone touch the bolt?”
“No.”
He wrote both answers.
Rosa had later heard Vanessa tell someone that the flower girl was waiting and shouldn't be brought out yet. Rosa hadn't seen the other person clearly. They were around the corner, beyond the doorway where she was carrying a tray.
“Could it have been a different child?”
“She said flower girl. Yours was the only one I saw.”
“Do you remember the exact words?”
“Not all of them. Something about after the vows. I remember that because I thought flower girls went first.”
There was a gust of wind across the microphone.
“I have to go.”
“Thank you.”
“Mr. Mercer?”
“Andrew.”
“Your little girl asked me something that morning.”
He stopped writing.
“What?”
“Where the family was supposed to sit.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Front rows. She said she knew that. She wanted to know where she went after the pictures.”
Rosa had pointed toward the children's table near the reception tent. Emily said thank you and returned to the bridal preparation room.
It proved no locked door. It established no motive. But it changed the shape of the day in Andrew's mind. His daughter had been trying to locate her place before anyone shut her in a room.
He asked Rosa whether she could write down her account, including the things she hadn't seen. She said she could do it after work. He told her there was no need to send anything from an employer's device.
At home, Emily was building a paper model from her museum packet. He watched her fit a wing into a slot and thought about asking where the family sat. He didn't bring it up. She had already given him an account. He would not keep mining her for details every time another adult spoke.
Instead he asked whether the model needed glue.
“No. You're supposed to read first.”
“A recurring weakness of mine.”
She slid the instructions across the table.
Later, while she showered with the bathroom door slightly open, he read Rosa's message. She had included the morning question, the walk toward the room, and the overheard instruction. She had also added that her canceled follow-up assignment had involved collecting table linens and returning rental items from his wedding.
Martin had told her it was a client-management matter now. She still had other shifts, though she would lose the hours for this one.
Andrew corrected his notebook again. Lost hours, not fired. The distinction didn't make the pressure harmless. It made it accurate.
Andrew drafted a request to Martin asking why Rosa had lost the follow-up work. Before sending it, he reread her account. He decided to ask what she wanted before contacting her employer about her hours. Waiting felt unhelpful, but acting without asking would turn his concern into another instruction she had to manage. He sent a shorter reply instead: I have kept the messages. If you need a copy of anything I received, tell me. Rosa answered with a simple thanks. It was less dramatic than a confrontation with management, and more useful to the person whose hours were at stake. Andrew began to understand that distinction as a form of work, though it gave his anger very little to do.
He replied with thanks and asked whether she wanted him to request that the venue restore the work. She answered no. Not yet. She needed to handle that herself.
He accepted it.
May you like
Five minutes later, Rosa sent a photograph of a handwritten service note she had kept with her shift paperwork. It listed food restrictions and timing changes.
At the bottom, beside the flower-girl instructions, someone had written: Bride to handle personally.
