George cleared his throat. “Sorry, this is hard to talk about with you. I don’t want to make you think badly of your father. I know you loved him.”
“It’s okay. I want to know what happened.” I forced a small, encouraging smile. “He didn’t talk to me much when he was alive. Not about serious things, anyway.”
When my father died last year, I was miserable for obvious reasons, but a feeling of guilt overshadowed that misery. I never spent much time with him when I was growing up, and while I knew that wasn’t my fault—he was an addict who was constantly in and out of different treatment facilities—I would’ve liked to know him better. Now that opportunity was lost to me forever, and the only way I could get to know him was through other people who knew him.
George rubbed his forehead and continued with the story. “The drinking got worse and worse as the years went by. My uncle said he even showed up at work drunk a few times, so he was on thin ice there. I have a feeling he was also using some sort of drugs by that stage, but I’m not sure. I could never prove it, because I never saw him taking anything.”
“He probably was,” I said softly. “He hid it from Mom really well when they first met, but she found out eventually, and he admitted he’d been doing stuff for years. Mostly pills.”
“Right.” George scratched his jaw. “Well, anyway, like I said, this went on for a few years. I suggested that he get help for the drinking problem because I was worried, but he wasn’t interested. He tried to play it off like it was an overreaction on my part. A few mutual friends were even on his side and thought I was making a big deal about nothing, because back then it was pretty normal to have a glass of wine at lunch with a client. Except James wasn’t just having a glass of wine at lunch. He was hiding vodka in water bottles and sneaking whiskey into his morning coffees.”
“That sounds about right.” I knitted my brows. “I’m guessing he did something bad to you when he was drunk or high?”
“Sort of. But there’s more to the story than that,” George replied. He let out another long sigh before going on. “As I mentioned before, I took over the family hotel after college, so I was there most days. One Friday, your father and some of his colleagues came into the hotel restaurant for a work lunch. That very same Friday was actually the first day of a three-day-long science fair for all the middle schools in the area. Not just Crown Point—children from all the surrounding towns were invited as well. The organizers chose to hire one of our ballrooms for the event, and we offered subsidized accommodation for all the out-of-town families who didn’t want to drive back and forth each day. So… we had a lot of children staying there.”
My heart froze in my chest. “Did my dad hurt a child?”
“No.” George raked a hand through his hair again. “He accusedmeof hurting one. A twelve-year-old girl from Woodsen’s Bay.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked, eyes wide.
“At the end of the day, it all boiled down to a stupid, drunken misunderstanding. But it was one that almost cost me my reputation and livelihood.” George pressed his lips into a thin line and slowly shook his head. Then he went on. “The girl had an allergic reaction to something she ate. Nothing serious; she just felt a bit ill and needed to return to her room. Her parents weren’t around, though. They’d ducked out of the hotel to do some sightseeing around town, thinking that their daughter was busy setting up her biology display with her friends and teachers. Perfectly safe.”
“Right. So what happened?”
“Well, the girl’s parents had the keycard to their suite, so her teachers couldn’t get her in there. As the hotel owner, I had a master keycard that could access any room if necessary. So I offered to escort the girl back to her room.”
“Oh.” My stomach began to churn. I could see where this story was going now.
“I took the girl up to her suite, wrote a note for her parents to explain what had happened in case she was asleep when they got back, and then I left. I got caught up after that with some issues with the cleaning staff down the hall, so I was stuck up on the sixth floor for quite some time.” George paused and lifted a palm. “I know this sounds like a ridiculous amount of detail and backstory for me to give you, but it’s all relevant.”
“It’s okay, I get it.”
George’s lips tightened. “Now… here’s the story from your dad’s perspective,” he said in a low voice. “He came out of the restaurant to make a phone call and saw me crossing the lobby with a young girl. He was too far away to speak to me before I got into the elevator with the girl, so he just stood there and watched, wondering what I was doing. Then he sat down in a quiet part of the lobby and made his phone call. It turned out to be a very long call, and he happened to notice that I didn’t come back down to the lobby until halfway through it. Somewhere around twenty minutes.”
“So he thought you were upstairs with the girl that whole time?”
“Yes.” Two lines appeared between George’s brows. “In his drunken, addled state, he got it all twisted and assumed the worst. He came home that day accusing me of being a predator. A sex offender. At first I had no idea what he was talking about, because he was ranting and raving so much, but then I realized. He thought I took that girl upstairs to—”
He abruptly stopped, shaking his head.
“I get it,” I said softly. “You don’t have to say it.”
He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “It was the worst thing anyone has ever accused me of. I couldn’t believe it. Especially coming from my best friend.”
“Yeah. That’s rough.”
George cleared his throat. “I knew James was drunk, and I suspected he was high too,” he said. “So I tried to explain. I was even willing to forgive him for the egregious misunderstanding, if he just listened to me. But he didn’t. You know what he did instead?”
“What?”
“He called the police and filed a report against me. Then he packed his things and moved out to a rental. I got dragged into the station for questioning a couple of days later, and so did that poor little girl, who was beyond confused. My staff from the hotel were questioned too, along with the girl’s teachers and friends who were at the event.” George paused and shook his head. “It was awful. So awful. Thankfully, everyone told the truth about what really happened that day, and I was eventually cleared. But while the whole thing was going on, my name was mud. Your father was going around town telling anyone who’d listen that I was a filthy predator.”
“That’s horrible,” I murmured.
George rubbed his jaw and shook his head. “He didn’t apologize when the truth came out and cleared my name. He never even spoke to me again.”
“Is that when he left Crown Point?”