It felt like a betrayal of something, though I wasn’t sure what.
But I thought about the way Simone’s mother had introduced me at that party.
She works at the Beaumont.
And about my son’s voice on the phone, compressed and careful.
And I picked up the phone.
What Gary found took about 10 days.
We met at a Second Cup on Bank Street. He handed me a manila folder across the table without drama.
He’d always been economical with words.
The Hartley family finances had a gap in them.
Judge Hartley had retired on a full pension, but three years ago, the family had taken out a significant home equity line of credit against the Rockcliffe Park house.
The HELOC was substantial, nearly $400,000.
The same year, a numbered company registered to Simone appeared in Ontario corporate filings.
The numbered company had received two large transfers from the Hartley family in the same period.
The numbered company was listed as a partial guarantor on a loan that Simone’s law firm was currently reviewing her employment over.
Not publicly, but Gary had a contact.
“What kind of review?” I asked.
“Billing irregularities. Client trust account discrepancies.”
Gary drank his coffee.
“Nothing proven. But the review started eight months ago, and she’s still on desk duty.”
I sat with that.
My son was planning to marry a woman who might be under investigation by her own firm.
“Does he know?” I asked. “About any of it?”
“No way to know that from the outside,” Gary said. “But my read? No. She doesn’t seem like someone who shares that kind of information willingly.”
I drove home slowly.
I thought about what to do with this.
I thought about my brother’s question: Is it him or is it her?
I was beginning to understand it was both, in different ways, for different reasons.
I could call Darren right now. Tell him what I’d found.
But I knew exactly what would happen.
He’d tell Simone. Simone would tell her family.
There would be lawyers involved by the end of the week, and my son would spend the next decade believing his mother had tried to destroy his marriage out of jealousy.
I had to let this play out, but I could control the stage.
I called Cecil.
“The Hartley-McIntosh booking,” I said. “Cancel it. Full refund. Standard terms.”
Another pause.
“The reason I should give?”
“The venue unavailable due to owner requirements. It’s in the contract.”
“It is,” Cecil confirmed. “I’ll process it tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up and sat at my kitchen table for a long time.
Three days later, Darren called.
He was upset in a way I hadn’t heard from him since he was a teenager. That particular tightly wound upset that men get when they feel embarrassed and don’t want to say so directly.
“Mom, what did you do? Simone’s venue canceled. The Fairvale? She’s been planning this for a year.”
“I didn’t do anything. The venue sent a cancellation notice saying the owner had a personal scheduling conflict. Venues do that sometimes,” I said.
“Mom.”
“Darren, I think we need to talk.”
“Not about the venue. About other things.”
“What other things?”
“Come for dinner. Saturday. I’ll make tourtière again.”
There was a silence. I could hear him deciding whether to fight or comply.
Eventually, “Fine. Saturday.”
He came alone, which told me something.
I made the tourtière and a butter tart square for dessert because he’d loved them since he was nine.
We sat at the same kitchen table where I’d sat alone on a hundred nights balancing spreadsheets after he’d gone to bed.
I didn’t hand him the folder Gary had given me.
I’m not sure why, exactly.
It didn’t feel like the right move.
Instead, I asked him questions I hadn’t asked in two years.
About his job.
About what he wanted.
About whether he was happy in the way that had nothing to do with the trappings of happy, the house and the car and the wedding venue.
He answered carefully at first, then slowly, less carefully.
“I feel like I’m always catching up,” he said at one point.
He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at his plate.
“To what?”
“To where she thinks we should be. To what the Hartleys have. To how things are supposed to look.”
I let that sit for a moment.
“How do they look from where I’m sitting?” I asked.
He looked up.
“Like a lot of work,” he said. “Like a lot of performance.”
“And is that what you want?”
He didn’t answer.
But he didn’t say yes.
After dinner, I told him about the Fairvale.
Not Gary’s report, just the Fairvale.
I told him I owned it.
I watched his face go through several things in a short period of time. Confusion first, then something like hurt, then something I couldn’t quite name.
“You own the venue she booked?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“2017.”
“And you never told me.”
“I’ve kept a lot of things to myself. That was probably a mistake.”
He was quiet for a long time.
The kitchen clock ticked. Outside, someone on the street was warming up their car.
February in Ottawa.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because I think you deserve to know who you come from before you decide who you’re going to become.”
He left at 10:00.
He didn’t say much on his way out. He hugged me at the door, which he hadn’t done without prompting in about two years, and then he sat in his car in the parking lot for a while before he drove away.
I watched from the window.
I didn’t hear from him for 12 days.
Then Simone’s law firm made its review public.
Not dramatically.
A brief notice on their website about an internal compliance matter. The kind of language that tells you everything by saying nothing.
Three of the firm’s corporate clients moved their files that week.
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