I explained it plainly. Every job in that room had been created for a relative, with salaries two and three times the market rate, costing the company over four million dollars a year. An outside firm had finished its audit over the weekend. Each letter ended employment effective immediately, with thirty days of severance, which was far more than the law required and more than any of them had shown my daughter.

Gerald shouted that I could not do this to family. I reminded him, calmly, that on Christmas Eve he had locked a freezing fifteen-year-old out of his house and told her to go live with her loser father. Rebecca pushed through the crowd, tears running down her face. She admitted she had known everything and had never stopped her father, because she liked the comfort of the family’s approval. She begged me to cancel the divorce.

I told her no, and I said it without anger. Joyce wept and turned to Lily, apologizing in a shaking voice, and Lily accepted it quietly. Then one of the brothers, Dean, stepped forward. He was the only one who had actually worked in the field, and he asked for nothing. I offered him a real position as a crew supervisor, at fair pay. The others were told they could apply through normal hiring, like anyone else.

Gerald tore his letter in half and left. The divorce was finalized in the spring, and Rebecca signed the settlement she had already agreed to. Lily and I moved into a small house near the lake, and the company grew stronger without the dead weight. On Christmas Eve, Lily and I now cook dinner for Dean’s crew, and she told me she is proud to be a handyman’s daughter.