Chương 8
Except he had never signed it.
He picked it up too quickly, almost tearing the corner.
“Mr. Mercer?” someone called.
He looked up.
A man in a gray suit stood a few feet away, watching him with the uncomfortable patience of someone who already knew the answer to a question he had not asked.
Daniel folded the document before anyone else could read it.
“I dropped something,” he said.
The man glanced at the papers still on the floor.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Daniel’s fingers tightened around the folder.
The courthouse had always smelled the same to him.
Old paper.
Cheap coffee.
Wet coats during winter.
It was a place where people arrived carrying problems they hoped someone else could solve.
Today he had arrived carrying a problem he thought he had already buried.
The man in the gray suit stepped closer.
“My name is Aaron Blake.”
Daniel did not offer his hand.
“I know who you are.”
Aaron gave a small nod.
“That makes this easier.”
“No,” Daniel said quietly.
“It makes it worse.”
Three years earlier, Daniel had believed losing his job was the worst thing that could happen to him.
He had been wrong.
Losing his reputation had been worse.
The job had been a title.
The reputation had been the story people told about him when he was not in the room.
And for three years, that story had been simple.
Daniel Mercer was the man who approved the numbers.
Daniel Mercer was the man who missed the warning signs.
Daniel Mercer was the man who walked away before the company collapsed.
The details were more complicated.
They always were.
But complicated stories rarely survived when people wanted something easy to believe.
His phone buzzed inside his jacket.
He ignored it.
It buzzed again.
Aaron noticed.
“You should answer that.”
Daniel looked at the screen.
It was his daughter.
Maya.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
She had a habit of calling him during inconvenient moments because she believed inconvenience was not a good enough reason to avoid people.
He answered.
“Hey.”
“Dad?”
Her voice sounded different.
Not scared.
Not exactly.
Careful.
“What happened?”
Daniel looked toward Aaron.
“Why do you think something happened?”
“Because you only say ‘hey’ like that when something happened.”
A small laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
“That obvious?”
“To me.”
The hallway noise continued around him.
People argued quietly.
Phones rang.
A printer somewhere behind a closed door made a strange grinding sound.
For a moment, he was not in the courthouse.
He was standing in his kitchen six months earlier while Maya tried to teach him how to make pasta from scratch and became increasingly offended that he kept measuring ingredients.
“Cooking isn’t a science experiment,” she had told him.
“It literally involves measurements.”
“That is why you’re bad at it.”
He had laughed then.
He did not laugh much anymore.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re not going to tell me everything is fine, right?”
The question landed harder than he expected.
Daniel looked down at the document in his hand.
“No.”
Maya was silent.
Then she said, “Good.”
He closed his eyes.
“Good?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because every time you say everything is fine, you disappear for three days.”
He wanted to argue.
He wanted to say that was unfair.
But he remembered the unanswered messages.
The dinners he canceled.
The way he had convinced himself silence was protecting the people around him.
“I found something,” he said.
“What kind of something?”
Daniel looked at Aaron.
The man was watching him, but not impatiently.
Almost sadly.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That usually means it’s bad.”
“It might be.”
Maya exhaled.
“Are you alone?”
Daniel almost lied.
The lie reached the back of his throat and stopped there.
“No.”
“Who’s with you?”
“A person connected to the case.”
The silence that followed felt heavier than anger.
“The case you said was over?”
Daniel stared at the courthouse floor.
“Yes.”
“Dad.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“You don’t know because you keep deciding what everyone can handle.”
The words hurt because they sounded like something he had said to himself many times.
“I’m sorry.”
She did not answer immediately.
Daniel waited.
He had learned that apologies were not magic.
They were just words.
Sometimes people needed more than words.
“I’m coming there,” Maya said.
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
She noticed.
“So you still do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make decisions for everyone.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t want you dragged into this.”
“I’m already in it.”
The call ended before he could respond.
Aaron looked away.
Daniel hated that he had witnessed the conversation.
Not because it embarrassed him.
Because it showed too much.
“You have a complicated family,” Aaron said.
Daniel put the phone away.
“You don’t know anything about my family.”
Aaron nodded.
“That’s true.”
A pause.
“But I know what it looks like when someone has spent years trying to carry something alone.”
Daniel studied him.
“You came here to talk about the documents.”
“I did.”
“Then talk.”
Aaron reached into his briefcase.
He removed a photograph.
Not a copy.
An old printed photograph.
Daniel did not take it immediately.
He recognized the back before seeing the front.
There was a small blue mark in the corner.
His handwriting.
A habit from years ago.
He turned the photograph over.
Three people stood outside a restaurant.
Daniel.
His former boss, Richard Vale.
And Aaron.
Daniel looked up.
“I thought you worked for him.”
“I did.”
“You testified against him.”
Aaron’s expression changed slightly.
“I testified about what I knew.”
“That’s a careful answer.”
“It has to be.”
Daniel looked back at the photograph.
“What are you doing here?”
Aaron sat down on the bench beside the wall.
For the first time, he looked tired.
Not nervous.
Not confident.
Just tired.
“Because Richard Vale didn’t destroy the company by himself.”
Daniel felt the hallway become quieter.
Even though it wasn’t.
May you like
“And?”
Aaron looked at him.
