14. Holland
Chapter fourteen
Holland
By eight on Sunday morning, I was at the round pine table with a cooling second coffee beside a blank newsletter draft. The rental had never seemed so quiet, though I’d spent most of September there alone.
Since the fight, I’d slept more often at Cal’s, in his cedar-smelling bed. The rental had become an office with a kitchen attached. Newsletter Sunday was the only reason I’d returned to the desk.
My code of ethics hung above the desk, thumbtacked to the drywall on my first afternoon in Copper Creek. Three rules, set in deliberately plain type. I’d consulted them every working day for six weeks. That morning, my gaze stopped at the silver tack above the page.
I went for more coffee.
Halliday called at nine, as scheduled.
“Walk me through the case.”
He moved quickly. Depositions would begin within six to eight weeks. The plaintiffs’ position had strengthened since spring.
Then he slowed. “We have a cooperating witness with documented material from inside the firm. Multiple incidents over several years.” He paused.
“I can’t tell you more. The evidence changes the likely course of the case.
The evidence also changes your timeline.
If there’s a criminal referral, your book will be racing the docket. ”
My hands had gone cold. The Pilot G-2 was already crossing the page, recording his phrasing word for word.
Documented meant records. Someone inside Mallick I’d learned to do so in less forgiving rooms.
“Yeah, okay.” I reached for her.
She landed in my lap with all the caution of dropped laundry. Both hands clamped around my jaw, steering my face toward hers.
“Hollie,” she repeated, satisfied that the matter was settled.
Cleo apologized for the chaos. I waved her off. She took the gesture for politeness, though the wave was the most honest response I’d managed all day.
That afternoon, I drove past the base.
The road could take me home, giving my choice plausible cover. Outside the gate, I slowed before pulling the Subaru onto the gravel shoulder. I left the heater running.
Cleo’s SUV stood in the yard with the car seat visible through the rear window.
Wes emerged from the prefab building in an off-duty flannel, crossing to the vehicle.
He opened the back door, unbuckled Junie, then swung her onto his hip in one practiced movement.
Two years of repetition showed in how little attention the maneuver required.
Whatever paperwork described their relationship, his body knew she was his to carry.
I gripped the wheel.
Through her windshield, Cleo waved. My hand answered before I could decide against the greeting.
Wes murmured to Junie. Her laugh carried faintly across the gravel.
He headed toward the truck with her. Near the flagpole, the brass memorial plaque caught a weak stripe of November sun.
Four names. One belonged to the man whose widow had left their daughter here, then driven away without fearing she would be mishandled.
Cal had built his adult life among these people. I’d understood that fact as information before. From the shoulder of the road, the knowledge became scale.
My book passed through their lives because their lives were the subject.
The base wasn’t scenery. Cleo wasn’t useful testimony between chapters.
If I mishandled the story, Cal’s losses wouldn’t stay confined to reputation or employment.
Junie had a name for me. Cleo had waved because she was glad to see me.
I had entered the calculation without admitting my presence.
The proposal I’d sold had no provision for that. The author had arrived in the valley unnamed by anyone who lived here.
At home, I finally put the conflict in writing.
I used the Moleskine rather than the laptop. The laptop held documents intended to survive discovery, editing, or publication. The notebook was where I tested a belief before someone else could use the belief against me.
I dated a clean page, then held the capped end of the Pilot against my lip. After several minutes, I wrote:
I am in a romantic relationship with a former Mallick & Vale employee who will be referenced in the piece. I withheld that fact from my editor beyond any period I can defend.
I read the sentence twice. Ink had always been my safeguard against convenient memory. Now the ink held my own conduct in place.
I closed the notebook, sliding the volume beneath the laptop. The conflict remained unresolved. I had produced a record, which was smaller than a confession yet harder to deny.
At 10:03 that night, after bourbon at eight followed by three rewrites of the final paragraph, I sent the newsletter. The schedule had held for nineteen months. Three thousand subscribers had followed me out of the slow years, one Sunday at a time.
The confirmation appeared on-screen.
The furnace ran beneath my feet. My glass sat empty beside the laptop.
The ethics sheet remained above the table.
I’d once treated those three rules as fortification: following them kept the compromised people outside.
That had been vanity. Ethics were closer to procedure.
They mattered most after the clean choices were gone.
I was a journalist whose editor had asked a direct question but received an evasive answer. I was also Hollie to a two-year-old who had spent the afternoon at a compound memorializing her father. Both facts would follow me into the manuscript.
The book I had sold was no longer the book I could write. The replacement would cost more—in access, trust, perhaps the contract itself. The work would require me to expose my own position with the same precision I’d used on everyone else’s.
For weeks, Cal had joined me in practicing how to sit together without filling the room simply because silence made me uneasy. Alone at the pine table, I tried the same discipline with fear.
I couldn’t promise myself that the book would be all right.
I could make the book rigorous.
For now, rigor was the only promise I had earned.