Margaret's eyes softened instantly. "I know."
Lena looked down into her dark cup. "I hate that some part of me even has to consider it."
"Considering help isn't the same as selling your soul, Lena."
"That depends entirely on who is offering the help."
Before Margaret could answer, two younger banquet workers walked past the open office door, whispering to each other. One of them glanced in quickly and then looked away when she caught Lena's eye.
Lena felt it immediately: the room had shifted around her. By mid-morning, everyone in the building knew. Hotels were like insular towns trapped inside concrete walls; facts rarely traveled without costume jewelry, but enough of the baseline had spread. People stared a little too long in the hallways. A dishwasher in the employee cafeteria asked flatly if Annie was the little girl from the ballroom. A line cook claimed he'd heard Mr. Whitmore was going to put the child in a private academy immediately. Someone else claimed the local paper had already called the front desk asking questions.
Lena kept working. She remade coffee stations, stripped linen from banquet tables, and hauled heavy bags of folded napkins to the storage locker while pretending her life had not become hallway talk. It was humiliating, but it was also entirely familiar. Poor people frequently learned the hardest version of privacy: everyone could discuss your trouble, but very few could actually change it.
At noon, her supervisor, Denise Carver, called her into the operations office. Denise was a woman in her fifties with tired shoulders and a face that the years had sharpened instead of erased. She was not a cruel person, and in a place like this, that counted for something.
Denise closed the office door behind Lena and gestured toward the single chair. "Sit."
Lena stayed standing, her hands joined in front of her apron. "I'm fine, Denise."
Denise gave her a long look. "You are not fine, Lena." Lena said nothing. Denise opened a corporate folder, glanced at a memo inside, then snapped it closed again. "Corporate got a phone call this morning. So did the general manager. Someone from a local society page wants a formal comment on what happened in the ballroom last night."
Lena's stomach tightened. "I didn't talk to anybody."
"I know you didn't."
"Then why am I in here?"