Page 112 of The Paradise Problem

“Yeah. If I remember correctly, the program started combing emails or something? I think there was some big employment lawsuit, but I don’t remember the details.”

I wave him to shush as the anchor returns on-screen, and the panel splits to show a woman standing outside a giant Weston Foods gate.

“We’re going to CNN’s Stephanie Elam now, who’s covering the story for us in Irvine, California. Stephanie, what can you tell us about the situation?”

“Well, Victor,” she says, “the details are still emerging but here’s what we know: Back in 2013, a lawsuit was brought against Weston Foods by a regional manager named Kasey Bellingham, who alleged she had been unlawfully passed over for promotion. Bellingham—a model employee by every internal metric—claimed she was up for promotion and denied at a performance review where her pregnancy was mentioned by her manager. According to Bellingham, she had never told anyone at the company that she was pregnant but had sent an email to a personal friend using her private email account on a work computer. The matter was settled out of court, and a legal spokesperson for the family explained at the time that the PISA software, designed by the son of CEO Raymond Weston, had been improperly used to track employee communications. This son, a minor at the time of the software launch in 2010, has been identified as William Weston, currently a professor of economics and cultural anthropology at Stanford. What we’ve learned today from an anonymous series of documents leaked to CNN is that the surveillance went much deeper than emails and was, in several cases, used to stalk and sexually harass female employees at the company.”

I press my hand to my mouth, shaking my head. Everything about this feels wrong. “No way. No way.” I look up at my dad, my heart sprinting out of my chest. “That can’t be right. Dad, this isn’t Liam, there’s no way this is right.”

Dad lifts his chin for me to keep watching, but I’m already dialing Liam’s number. It immediately goes to a message saying the voicemail is full. Hanging up, I start scrolling, stopping on the only other Weston I have. But it’s not Reagan who answers, it’s Blaire.

“Hello?”

I launch myself from the table, pacing the room while this local correspondent continues to discuss the terrible, impossible, devastating things Liam is accused of doing. “Oh my God, Blaire. What the hell is happening?”

“Well, hello, pretty little liar.” There’s a smile in her voice, no heat, but I can picture the sharp, teasing glint in her eye.

“Okay, listen. I wanted to tell you everything. I really did, but for reasons that I think are now incredibly obvious, I couldn’t.”

“Oh, honey, I think you mispronounced ‘I was paid to lie my ass off.’ ” She laughs. “Which, honestly, I can respect. But goddammit, Anna, I was excited to have a friend in this mess of crazy.”

“You do have a friend,” I promise her. “I’ll take you out for a full margarita bar, Taco Tuesday, whatever, as soon as humanly possible, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”

She pauses. “I take it you’re watching the news.”

“Yes! What is this?”

“This, sugar, is Raymond Weston going for blood.”

“But why Liam’s blood? Didn’t he take the job?”

“Alex isn’t home yet, so I’m not sure, but I presume this means he did not,” she says.

I stare at the television, digesting this while my heart crawls into my windpipe. Another photo of Liam is shown on-screen, this one from when he’s younger; he looks barely out of his teens, but the chyron reads, Female Weston employees pressured into sharing personal photos.

“What?” I ask, reeling. “He didn’t take the CEO position?”

“Based on your question, am I to understand that you aren’t with him right now?”

“No. We had an argument and I think we ended things.” I feel the lump in my throat expand. “And now his phone is going straight to voicemail, and he won’t reply to my texts.”

Blaire lets loose a long sigh. “All these years and I knew this would come back around.”

“Will you tell me what it is, Blaire? Is this how Ray screwed Liam over?”

“Were you so busy fucking that boy six ways to Sunday that he never told you about the shit Ray pulled? Damn,” she says, smacking her lips. “This tastes like envy.”

“Can you please just… focus? I’m standing here watching the news say that Liam used software he created to spy on and sexually harass female Weston’s employees and I cannot believe he would ever do that.”

“Well,” Blaire says simply, “then don’t.”

Relieved, I crumple down onto the couch. “Okay.”

“I’m really not supposed to be talking about this. Ray paid a shit ton of money to have it scrubbed from Google searches, but I guess the talking heads never forget.” I hear the click of spiked heels against tiled floors, and the soft sound of a door being closed. “So, if someone asks, you didn’t get this from me, but here we go: PISA—it’s an acronym for the program Liam built while he was in school—was only ever meant to monitor inventory across stores,” she says. “It was a great idea, really. The entire goal of it was to reduce food waste.” My chest seizes at this, an inward, protective growl. “But when Ray wanted more ‘transparency in his employees’ activities,’ ” she says, and I hear the leaning air quotes in her words, “Liam did what Daddy said and modified the software to not only track ordering systems, but to log specific keywords in all of the programs, including emails. Kasey was just the start of it.” She hums, as if thinking this through. “Really, Kasey was the most minor of all the cases. But she was the first and went public before they figured out how to keep it under wraps. At the time, it was easier for the stockholders to forgive a reckless teenage boy for being naughty than a CEO for being a letch.”

“So it was never Liam doing this, right?”

“Oh God, no. Liam just handed the program over to IT and went away to college. Ray was the one spying. Ray was the one starting up conversations with employees, making them feel special for becoming friendly with the CEO, and eventually pressuring them to send him photos or share personal information.”

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