“Linda mentioned something else. She said you recognized my surname when I first applied here.”
Diane went still.
“Why would she tell you that?”
I stared at her.
“Is it true?”
She hesitated, then quietly asked, “How is Robert these days?”
Hearing my father’s name made my stomach drop.
“You know my dad?”
A faint smile crossed her face.
“Of course I do. Your father was my first mentor.”
I stared at her.
“When I started in this industry, I was 23,” she continued.
“I didn’t know anyone. I was terrified of making mistakes.”
Her voice softened.
“Most of the senior employees treated me like an inconvenience. Your father was different.”
She described how he’d patiently taught her things others expected her to know.
How he’d stayed late helping her prepare reports.
How he’d defended her after she made a mistake that nearly cost her position.
“He never made me feel stupid,” she said. “He’d put a coffee beside my desk and tell me, ‘You don’t have to know everything yet. That’s why you’re learning.'”
My throat tightened.
That sounded exactly like Dad.
“My own father thought I’d chosen the wrong career,” Diane continued. “Your dad was the first person who told me I belonged there. I don’t think he ever understood how much that meant to me.”
She looked at me.
“Years later, when you started looking for work, he called me.”
I gripped the arms of my chair.
“He asked whether I’d keep an eye on you. Help you find your feet.”
“Wait. My father asked you to get me this job?”
“No. He asked me to make sure you had someone you could turn to. You earned your position yourself.”
“Then why didn’t either of you tell me?”
“Because he knew how much your independence mattered to you.”
She paused.
“And because I thought I could help you without making you feel you owed anyone. I wanted to give you the same patience he gave me. I just wasn’t very good at it.”
I stared at the woman I’d spent months resenting.
She’d been trying to repay a kindness my father had shown her years earlier.
And I’d spent an entire evening ridiculing her to her own husband.
“Diane, I didn’t know.”
Her voice broke slightly.
“I know.”
She looked away.
“I’ve spent years telling Mark about your father. About what he did for me. When you joined the company, I told him how proud I was to have the opportunity to help Robert’s daughter.”
I felt tears gathering.
“At the party, Mark told me what you said.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head.
“Some of it was probably true.”
That surprised me more than anything.
“I’ve become difficult, Emma. I know that. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that your father helped me by being patient, not by expecting perfection.”
She wiped her cheek.
“But I honestly thought you knew I was on your side.”
Suddenly, I remembered her face on the balcony.
“That’s why you said, ‘Of all people’?”
She nodded.
“I knew what your father had entrusted to me. And I thought, somehow, I’d become someone you could trust too.”
I couldn’t find an answer.
That evening, I drove straight to my father’s house.
He was watering his plants when I arrived.
“Dad, did you ask Diane to look after me?”
He turned slowly.
For a moment, he looked almost embarrassed.
“She told you?”
“Why didn’t you?”
He put down the watering can.
“Because you made it clear you wanted to do things independently.”
“So you went behind my back?”
“I asked an old friend to make sure you weren’t alone.”
“Do you know what it’s like wondering whether people respect your work or just your father’s name?”
He looked genuinely hurt.
“Emma, I never asked Diane to give you anything you hadn’t earned.”
“But you didn’t trust me to find my own way.”
“I trusted you. I just didn’t want finding your way to be unnecessarily lonely.”
He sat beside me on the porch.
“Emma, when Diane first joined our office, she was bright and determined, but she was also terribly afraid of making mistakes. She wanted so badly to prove she belonged there.”
He smiled sadly.
“She used to apologize every time she asked a question.”
I listened.
“One afternoon, she broke down because she thought she’d never be good enough. I told her that nobody finds their feet without someone steadying them occasionally.”
