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She was shocked they hadn’t gotten desperate enough to frame his junk mail offers screaming YOU’VE BEEN PRE-APPROVED.
In a closet, Sylvie found dozens of banker’s boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. Her grandfather’s records. The ones they hadn’t needed in decades, but no one had the heart to throw away.
Sylvie touched one of the brown boxes. A person’s entire life was reduced to thousands of invoices, tax returns, and old receipts.
At least they were labeled by date. Her grandfather had been a significantly better record keeper than his daughter. He, like Sylvie, understood the value of order.
She started with the box marked Q4 - 1979 in her grandfather’s neat handwriting and worked backward in time. After an hour, she’d made it to the beginning of 1977 without any hint of a lawsuit.
It was impossible. Her grandfather was a meticulous record keeper. If he hired a lawyer, even for a consultation, he would have filed away the copy of the check and a memo recording the time, date, and topic of the meeting.
How could there be no retainer agreement? No evidence that the suit happened at all. It didn’t make sense.
Sylvie was about to start on 1980 when the door to the office opened.
“What are you doing in here? Aren’t you going to eat?”
Her mother stood in the doorway. Her blonde hair falling in cascading waves over her shoulders. Even in a softball uniform, she moved with graceful elegance.
“I’m looking for something about the lawsuit. There has to be a note. A clue. Something in Abuelo’s records.” She gazed into the organized contents of the box. “I can’t find anything.”
“Abuelita doesn’t seem to remember anything either.” She walked into the office and sat at the brown leather chair behind the desk. “It’s strange,” she agreed, her dark eyes, made blue by contact lenses, stared off at the open closet.
“What are we doing in here?” Her dad, beer in hand, appeared in the doorway. He’d removed his softball shirt, leaving only the white undershirt untucked from his pants.
“I’m looking for the lawsuit stuff. There is no way I’m giving up until I prove that the Machados are the thieves.”
Her father took a sip from the bottle. “Let it go, Syl. The old guys probably just realized they were going to blow a fortune in legal fees before they got anywhere.”
Sylvie shook her head. That didn’t sit right with her. There would be evidence if that was the case. A paper trail to follow. At least in her grandfather’s records.
He didn’t give up. “You need to leave well enough alone. People love the rivalry. It’s like sports, you know? Think about all the t-shirts we sell just because our customers want to show their loyalty. If we ruin that, part of the appeal is gone.”
Before Sylvie could explain to her father that it was about honor, not money, her mother chimed in.
“It’s about what’s right and wrong, Manny. If there’s an answer out there, I think we should find it.” With as much movement as her refreshed face would allow, her mother scowled. “God, what I wouldn’t give to wipe the smug look off of Carla Machado’s face once and for all.” Her eyes brightened as her attention cut to Sylvie. “Do you think we can find out before the Cultura Cubana Gala? At the very least by the election, right? That’ll tear the foundation right out from under her.” She grinned like a cartoon villain stroking a Persian cat.
“Por Dios, Barbara. Don’t you care about karma at all?”
“How can exposing the truth be bad karma, Manny? Those people have been dragging us through the mud for decades. You don’t get it.”
Her good natured father smiled, his chubby face creasing more than it used to. “What? Just because I don’t have guava paste running though my veins instead of blood suddenly I don’t get it? I might have married into this feud, but I’ve been around nearly forty years, okay? I get it.”
Sylvie disagreed, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying so. He couldn’t understand what he couldn’t understand.
“What are we talking about?” Junior, a younger, stockier version of their father appeared next to him in the doorway.
“The lawsuit your sister uncovered between us and the Machados. We think it’s about the bakeries,” he explained while Sylvie actively ignored him. Just his presence had spiked her body temperature.
“We shouldn’t waste any of our money suing them,” he replied with enraging confidence, despite not knowing a thing about the subject.
“Our money?” The force of Sylvie’s sarcastic laugh stripped her throat, irritating it.
“Sylvia.” Her father’s warning was a bucket of gasoline on her smoldering aggravation.
“Why don’t you ever say Junior? He started—”
“What did I start?” Junior interrupted, his hands on his square hips. “Everything sets you off.” He mumbled the rest under his breath, but Sylvie distinctly heard lunatic.
