The first was Clare’s brother David.
“He needs a chance,” she told me.
David had enough experience for a procurement position, so I hired him.
Then came Marcus.
Then Tyler.
Then cousins, uncles, and family friends.
I told myself each decision stood on its own.
Some of them really were good workers. One family friend, Greg, was an excellent plumber. Several cousins performed perfectly well. The problem was not that every Collins-connected employee was incompetent.
The problem was that I had stopped asking whether I was making business decisions or marriage decisions.
Eventually, I could search the employee directory for “Collins” and watch names fill the screen.
Forty-seven people had some family or social connection to the Collins network.
At family dinners, some of those same people laughed when Martin mocked my truck.
I let it happen.
Clare had asked me to preserve the illusion, and preserving it became easier than confronting what the illusion was costing me.
I told myself I was being patient.
Sometimes patience is just fear wearing better clothes.
Christmas Eve of 2023 ended that.
At 7:50 that evening, a main line burst at the Kellerman Commercial Plaza, a seventy-two-unit property where we had held the maintenance contract for four years.
Pete Reyes, the on-call technician, arrived first.
He called after assessing the damage.
“I need you here, Daniel. Main line. There’s a judgment call on the repair, and I don’t want to make it without you.”
I called Clare.
She and Sophie, our sixteen-year-old daughter, were already at her parents’ house.
“I’m going to be late,” I told her. “Probably two hours. Maybe more.”
She exhaled.
“Fine, Daniel. We’ll see you when we see you.”
I drove to the property, climbed into the crawl space, and started working.
At 9:12, my phone rang.
I nearly ignored it.
My hands were wet, filthy, and numb, and I was halfway through replacing a coupling.
Then I saw Sophie’s name.
I answered immediately.
“Hey, Soph.”
“Dad.”
The wind behind her almost swallowed the word.
I stopped moving.
“What happened?”
“Please come get me.”
Her breathing was uneven.
“I’m outside. It’s freezing.”
I came out of the crawl space so quickly I hit my shoulder on a beam.
“Outside where?”
“Grandpa’s front porch.”
“What happened?”
She tried to explain without crying.
Martin had started joking about my truck again, especially the missing mud flap.
Sophie told him to stop.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, Martin accused her of disrespecting him in his own house.
“He opened the door,” she said. “He told me to wait outside until I could apologize.”