Chapter 5 - THE FIRST LIE MY MOTHER TOLD
Dana arranged to meet Rachel at a coffee shop in Blue Ash.
Rachel arrived wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy afternoon. She refused to sit near the window.
“I used Lydia’s badge twice,” she admitted. “Victor asked me to retrieve archived vendor files after hours.”
“Why use her badge?” Dana asked.
“Mine was being audited.”
“By whom?”
Rachel stirred her coffee without drinking it. “The board’s finance committee.”
Mom leaned forward. “You let them think I entered that office.”
“I thought the entries would never matter.”
“They used them to deny my unemployment.”
“I didn’t know Victor would go that far.”
Dana placed the cooler certification between them.
“Did you put Lydia’s initials on this?”
Rachel looked at Mom.
“No,” she said. “Lydia did.”
I had been sitting at another table with headphones over my ears. No music was playing.
Mom’s chair creaked.
“It was one log,” she said.
Dana’s expression remained still. “Explain.”
The previous December, the cafeteria’s walk-in cooler had failed during winter break. Mom discovered it on Monday morning. The digital monitor showed temperatures above the safe range for hours.
She ordered the milk, meat, and eggs discarded.
Hale refused.
Replacing the food would cost nearly eighteen thousand dollars, and the school’s winter fundraiser had already fallen short. Hale told Mom the maintenance company believed the monitor had malfunctioned, not the cooler.
Rachel begged Mom to initial a corrective report stating that secondary thermometers had remained within range.
“Were there secondary thermometers?” Dana asked.
Mom looked at me.
“No.”
She had signed because Rachel said fifty hourly employees could lose their jobs if the kitchen budget collapsed. Mom made Hale promise the questionable food would be discarded anyway.
He promised.
The next morning, the same chicken was thawing in the prep sink.
“That was when I started taking pictures,” Mom said.
Rachel removed her sunglasses.
“You weren’t an innocent whistleblower, Lydia. You helped them first.”
“I made one terrible decision.”
“And after that, Victor owned both of us.”
Mom’s face tightened. “Why didn’t you tell me about the exemptions?”
Rachel looked toward the door as though someone might be listening.
“Because once you saw the whole system, I knew you’d report it.”
“That’s what you should’ve wanted.”
“I had more to lose than you did.”
Mom flinched as if Rachel had struck her.
Rachel gathered her bag, but Dana blocked the document with one hand.
“Before you leave, answer this. Who placed the exemption packet in the cabinet Lydia was told to clean?”
Rachel’s eyes moved from Dana to Mom.
May you like
Then to me.
“You still think she found it by accident?” she asked.
