Chapter 21
VI
Armen jumps down from the table, saying something about checking in with Sting, and Mara wanders off to find Kade. She doesn't say that, but she doesn't need to.
I stay in the food court on the plastic table, arms wrapped around my knees.
It's quiet in here. Just me and the faded tiles and the napkin dispenser.
I think about the smoothie Mara and I used to split when we had six dollars and too much time.
Fourteen years old, sitting in this exact food court, arguing about boys and homework and whose turn it was to pay.
Neither of us could have imagined ending up back here like this, Mara finding herself in a dead mall she used to visit as a kid, me finding something that feels more like home than anything I've had in years.
I walked into the Rot with a bad plan and nothing left to lose. Now, I have three men who would walk through fire for me, a best friend who chose me over her own mother, and a thread I've been pulling on quietly, obsessed over whether or not it might tell me something about my father.
Is the law firm the last bit of that thread? Will it take me where I want to go? Will I regret it, learning something about my father I don’t want to know? Will there be ugly surprises?
Or will I learn that my father is the man I’ve always thought him to be, and that he did his damnedest to save this town from itself?
The fact that he didn’t succeed is not important. What’s done is done. The only question now is… what role did he actually play, and what the hell happened to him?
I go back to my room for his papers.
I've read these so many times, I think I have them memorized, but I pore over them again anyway, this time looking for one specific thing.
Every mention of the law firm. I clear everything off my floor and spread the documents out in a new arrangement, grouping by the firm's name rather than by date or company the way I usually do.
It takes a while. My back starts to hurt. I don't stop.
The firm appears four times.
Once in a property transfer, once in a shell company registration, once in a memo my father wrote to himself, and once on a zoning variance I'd always assumed was too boring and bureaucratic to matter.
I sit back on my heels, pouring over everything like something new might jump out and answer my endless questions.
With shaky hands I gather the documents, put the rest away carefully the way my dad organized them, and I go looking for Mara.
She's not with Kade, as it turns out, but in the hub, working and listening to everything around her. I can tell by her occasional glances to identify who's talking.
"Hey. I need to show you something," I say quietly.
She glances at her supervisor, who's looking the other way, and follows me into the corridor.
I show her the documents. She reads them slowly.
"Okay. This is a law firm, right?" she says. "What does it mean? What did they have to do with anything?"
I stare at them like the answer might jump out. "I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out."
She looks at me. "Have you told the guys?"
"Not yet."
She puts her hands on her hips and purses her lips. I brace myself for a scolding. "Vi."
I hold my hands up in defense. "I know. I will tell them. I just want to understand it first, before I bring them in.”
She studies me, then nods once. I get it. She might not understand, in fact I am sure she doesn’t, but she trusts my instincts and is willing to support me. Even if it’s against her better judgment.
"Alice," she says. “You need to talk to Alice.”
"That's what I was thinking."
She nudges me in the ribs the way she did when we were kids, and heads back to work.
I stand in the corridor with my papers, and think about how far we've all come to get to this crazy place in our lives. First, Dad disappearing to wherever he went, then me ending up in the Rot, both of us on opposite ends of the same scandal. I’m hoping will bring him back to me, one way or the other.
I hunt down Alice, and eventually find her.
She's in the north corridor, walking somewhere. She adjusts her direction when she sees me, not breaking stride.
"Walk with me," she says.
I fall in beside her. "Alice, I found something in my father's files, the name of a law firm that’s on multiple documents. He circled it every time with a question mark. I don't know what it means. The same thing appeared in the records we found at the Voss building."
She continues to walk and is quiet long enough that I think she either doesn’t know anything, or doesn’t want to tell me what she does know.
C’mon, Alice.
After a moment, she looks around and lowers her voice. "Your father called them ‘the ceiling’," she says, using finger quotes.
I stop. Alice takes two more steps before she stops too, and turns around.
"The ceiling?" I say.
"The person or people above everything. The one who never appears in any document, never attends any meeting, never signs anything directly.
Everything flows up to them and nothing comes back down with their name on it.
Your father spent months trying to identify who it was. I never found out if he succeeded."
"He might have," I say. "Before he disappeared."
Alice looks at me, the scar on her cheek catching the light. "Follow the law firm, Vi," she says. "Not Voss. Not Fischer. The firm. That's the thread your father was pulling when he ran out of time."
She turns and walks away.
The ceiling. Someone above everything, above the development company Voss, above the shell companies, above Fischer. Someone who never left a fingerprint. Someone my father was closing in on when he disappeared.
His disappearance wasn't random. I know it. I can feel it. It wasn't just the pressure becoming too much or the case falling apart. He was getting close to something specific and someone made him stop.
I look down at the documents, my hands shaking. Same firm, four times, multiple years, one question mark. Dad’s handwriting and his question, still unanswered, just waiting for someone to pick it back up.
That would be me.