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focusing on her face, “Well, you’re not,” I hissed.
     
    “Fine, I’ll tell you,” her watery eyes flickered as she tried to blink away the tears. “It’s really hard for me to talk about, but I need this job so I’ll tell you why that’s on my background check. My dad was sick. He had developed lung cancer, but he refused to let us kids see how bad he was doing. We did everything we could to try to help him. We got him into this really nice nursing home, but he refused to go. He was a very independent man and didn’t want to give that up. We begged and pleaded with him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he didn’t need nobody to take care of him. When we realized he wasn’t going to go into the nursing home, we accepted the fact that we’d have to keep an eye on him. My sister even moved onto the same block as him so she was nearby. She basically became his caregiver.”
     
    She stopped for a moment and looked up at me. I could tell the conversation was hard on her, but I needed to hear the story behind the charge. She continued telling me about her dad.
     
    “Despite all the different treatments he tried, he kept getting sicker and sicker. One night, he was having so much trouble breathing that my sister took him to the hospital. The doctor did a chest x-ray and saw that his lung cancer had significantly progressed. My sister was told that my dad had about a month to live—at the most and that he’d likely die well before the month was up. The doctor tried to admit him into the hospital so they could keep him comfortable, but that man was stubborn as all get out. He said if he was gonna die, he didn’t want to do it in some hospital bed. They didn’t have any choice so they sent him home. It was about two weeks after that when my sister called me crying. My dad’s landlord had been banging on the door that morning. As his caregiver, my sister was supposed to have been handling his finances and paying his bills. Instead, she’d been using the money for her own personal benefit and blew through every monthly social security check he got. I called the landlord and told him that my dad was dying and there must have been some mix-up, but he didn’t care. He said the only choices we had was to catch up the rent payments or have dad out within 24 hours. I didn’t have the money to pay it and I know my sister didn’t have any money, but what I did have was a checkbook. I wrote the check for almost $1,200 knowing that it wasn’t going to clear. I also knew that it would take a couple weeks before the landlord found out about it. I knew my dad wasn’t going to live much longer so I wrote the check. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do, but it bought my dad enough time to die with dignity and peace. He died a week later in his home instead of homeless on the street and he didn’t have to know what my sister had done. I couldn’t live with myself if my dad knew how she’d done him while on his death bed.”
     
    Natalia had tears rolling down her cheeks. It was a sad story that even managed to tug at my heartstrings. After hearing her reasoning for the charge, I questioned whether or not I should let her go. On one hand, that’s our policy. I’ve passed on several high-quality applicants in the past because they had a record. On the contrary, this was the only thing on her record and, had it not been for her dying father, her record would have been as clean as they come. Plus there was still the fact that she’d seen my dirty laundry. Firing her might send her running to the open arms of the press for extra cash. The last thing I need is a disgruntled employee blabbing her mouth, ruining my reputation, but her blatantly lying makes me wonder. It’s not like she wasn’t aware what was on her record.
     
    “I’m very sorry to hear about your dad Natalia. I’m going to have to think on this for a little bit before I make my final decision. You can go ahead and get back to work for now and