Chương 7
I sat back on my heels.
Then I lifted the lid.
The first things inside were exactly what I expected.
Trade-school certificates.
Old tax forms.
A cracked safety visor.
A photograph of me at twenty-four standing beside my first service van and looking unbearably pleased with myself.
Beneath that sat a bundle of notebooks held together with a rubber band.
I recognized them.
Service logs.
Not official company records.
Mine.
I had kept pocket notebooks during my first years in the trade because I was terrified of forgetting diagnostic steps.
Temperatures.
Pressure readings.
Customer complaints.
Model numbers.
Mistakes.
Rebecca must have saved them.
I picked up the first one.
The cover was soft from age.
Most of it meant nothing now.
Then a folded sheet slipped from between the pages and landed against my knee.
It was a photocopy of a Mercer Mechanical purchase order.
At the bottom, beneath a list of commercial HVAC units, was my father’s signature.
Across the top, in Rebecca’s handwriting, were four words.
KEEP THIS.
DO NOT DISCARD.
I unfolded the purchase order on the carpet and tried to understand why Rebecca had thought it mattered.
The document was dated fourteen years earlier, during my brief time at Mercer Mechanical.
The customer was St. Vincent Community Hospital, a job I remembered mostly because the mechanical room had been hot enough to soak through my shirt by eight in the morning.
The order listed six rooftop units, control modules, compressors, and miscellaneous equipment.
Nothing jumped out.
Then I looked at the totals.
The first number was the manufacturer price.
The second was Mercer Mechanical’s billed amount.
The difference was high but not impossible for commercial work once labor, freight, warranties, and overhead were included.
I checked the next line.
Then the next.
Every major piece of equipment had been billed twice.
Not marked twice.
Actually entered twice under different item codes.
I sat on the floor with the paper across my knees.
Maybe it was a revised invoice.
Maybe one entry replaced another.
Maybe there was an explanation I did not understand because I had been twenty-four and interested only in keeping equipment running.
I reached for the service notebooks.
June woke while I was spreading them across the carpet.
She sat up on the couch with her hair flattened on one side.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking through old work stuff.”
“Why?”
“I found something.”
She rubbed one eye.
“Bad something?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her more than reassurance would have.
She walked over in mismatched socks and looked down at the papers.
“Your handwriting was terrible.”
“It has improved.”
“No.”
She picked up the old photograph of me beside the service van.
“You had hair.”
“I still have hair.”
“More hair.”
“That is unnecessarily personal.”
She smiled.
Then her attention shifted to the writing on the folded purchase order.
“That’s Mom’s.”
“Yeah.”
June crouched beside me.
“Why did she say keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her?”
“I don’t remember seeing it.”
Her finger hovered above Rebecca’s handwriting without touching it.
“She used all caps when she was serious.”
I looked at her.
“You remember that?”
“She wrote CLEAN YOUR ROOM like that.”
“That was extremely serious.”
June stood.
“I’m hungry.”
“You just ate pancakes.”
“That was hours ago.”
“It was ninety minutes.”
She looked at the clock.
“Hours.”
I made grilled cheese while she watched something on her tablet at the kitchen table.
The ordinary sounds helped.
Bread scraping across the cutting board.
Butter hissing in the pan.
June laughing quietly at something through one earbud.
I kept the purchase order beside the stove.
Every few minutes my eyes returned to it.
After lunch, I went through the remaining notebooks.
Most contained nothing useful.
One had a phone number for a plumber named Earl who had probably retired a decade earlier.
Another contained a list Rebecca had written in the back after borrowing it from me.
Milk.
Laundry soap.
Birthday candles.
Call dentist.
I stared at that list longer than I stared at the invoices.
Grief was irritating that way.
It ignored importance.
The things that broke you were rarely the things anyone else would recognize as valuable.
Near the bottom of the fifth notebook, I found St. Vincent again.
The entry was dated three weeks after the purchase order.
RTU 3 compressor replacement authorized.
Unit less than 60 days old.
Manufacturer denies warranty due to serial mismatch.
Call office.
I read it twice.
The memory came back in pieces.
The hospital maintenance director had been furious.
A compressor had failed almost immediately after installation.
The serial number on the unit did not match the equipment records.
My supervisor told me Mercer had received replacement stock from a distributor and the paperwork had not caught up.
I accepted that because I was twenty-four and because my supervisor was my father.
Below the note, another entry appeared in handwriting darker than the rest.
Walter says do not write serials in customer ticket.
I had written that.
My pulse changed.
I turned the page.
The next two entries from St. Vincent were gone.
Not crossed out.
Torn out.
Jagged paper remained near the binding.
I did not remember tearing them out.
Rebecca might have.
Or I might have done it for some ordinary reason years ago.
I checked the box again.
At the bottom, beneath old tax folders, was a manila envelope.
My name was written on the front.
Not Rebecca’s handwriting.
My father’s.
I opened it carefully.
Inside was a copy of a separation agreement from when I left Mercer Mechanical.
I remembered signing something.
I had not remembered the language.
The agreement said I acknowledged returning all proprietary information, customer records, pricing data, and company property.
There was also a confidentiality clause covering internal financial processes.
My signature sat at the bottom.
So did Walter’s.
A sticky note had been attached to the copy.
This one was Rebecca’s.
May you like
You were angry when you signed this.
Read paragraph 7 if Walter ever threatens you over old company material.
