Chapter 15
VI
Mara’s asleep beside me, curled on her side, mouth slightly open, with one hand tucked under her cheek.
She’s fallen into the deep, boneless sleep of someone whose body can finally relax, not having moved in over an hour.
She fell asleep fast and hard, mid-sentence, while telling me about a cute little dog she’d been feeding scraps to.
I pull the blanket up over her shoulder, and she doesn’t stir.
Now, it’s just me and Dad’s papers.
I’ve spread them on my side of the bed, keeping them away from Mara’s sleeping form.
Alice’s plastic bag is on the floor, empty, its layers of tape curling at the edges.
I’ve organized the pages into three groups: official-looking documents on the left, printed emails in the center, and handwritten notes on the right.
Forty-something pages arranged in rows across the bed while my best friend breathes softly on the other side.
I’ve already scanned them once, in Alice’s room, with Sting’s eyes on me and three men’s opinions grinding down on me. That quick read was survival, where I was scanning for confirmation, grabbing headlines, and fighting to hold myself together because I would not fucking cry in front of them.
This is different. I’m really reading this stuff now.
I start with the memos. Official city letterhead, the old Rothwell seal in the corner that I used to trace with my finger when I was a kid, sitting on the floor of Dad’s office when he worked late.
The seal was a bird. I didn’t know what kind it was, just something with outstretched wings.
I used to think it was an eagle, but my dad told me it was a heron.
I told him herons were boring and eagles were cooler, and he laughed and said, “Herons are patient. Eagles just have better PR.”
Interesting comment that, at the time, meant nothing to me.
I set the memo down for a second, then pick it back up.
Dad’s notes are in the margins. Neat, small, angled slightly to the right, the awkward way left-handed people write.
Numbers circled. Names underlined. Question marks next to figures that didn’t add up.
The handwriting is so familiar, it makes my insides hurt.
I see the same careful script on every birthday card he ever gave me, on the notes he’d leave in my lunchbox, on the Post-its stuck to the fridge.
Picked up milk. Love you. Don’t forget picture day.
Those cards are gone. The apartment, the box I kept them in, all of it belongs to a life that doesn’t exist anymore. But here, on the margins of a memo about city contract inconsistencies, his handwriting survives. The same loops. The same slant. The same man.
Dad.
Mara turns over beside me. A small sound, barely a murmur, and her hand slides across the mattress until her fingers brush the edge of a memo. I slide the page out of her reach.
I move to the emails. Printed out, headers intact, some of them with his replies highlighted in yellow.
He was polite in the early ones, professional, using the measured, diplomatic language you use when you still believe the system works and is fair.
I’d like to request a review of the attached discrepancies.
Please advise on appropriate next steps.
By the later emails, the diplomacy is gone.
Not angry or confrontational—that’s not my Dad’s style—but stripped down and direct, taking on the tone of a man who’s stopped asking nicely because asking nicely didn’t work.
This is the third time I’ve raised this issue. I am formally requesting a response.
No response attached to any of them. Fuckers.
I read the handwritten notes last. These are different from the margin annotations.
Looser. Less careful. Written fast, in a hand that’s lost its patience with neatness.
Some are fragments and include names, dates, dollar amounts.
Some are longer, half paragraphs that read as though he was talking to himself, trying to work something out on paper.
One page stops me.
It’s a list. Short. Four names, written in a column. Three of them are council members, names I vaguely remember, faces from fundraisers and town halls, adults who shook my hand and told me my father was a great man. Next to each of these names is a single word or phrase in his handwriting.
Compromised.
Turned.
Bought or threatened. Unclear which.
The fourth name I don’t recognize but it’s underlined twice. There’s no annotation next to it, just the underlining, the pen pressed hard enough to dent the paper.
I set the page on the bed and stare at it.
These documents aren’t a vindication, even I know that. And that’s what Sting doesn’t understand about me. He was looking for a quick and dirty answer to my father’s guilt or innocence, and when it didn’t jump out and bite him in the ass, he discounted the whole fucking thing.
He wanted a quick answer, the triumphant proof, a silver bullet, a single piece of evidence that exonerates my father beyond all doubt. And when he didn’t find it, he called the whole thing circumstantial and moved on.
Just like that.
But that’s not what these papers are and that’s not how this works. They’re just notes where the full story is slowly taking shape.
My dad tried, was ignored, and tried harder. His allies abandoned him, one by one, until he was the only voice in the room still asking questions. And then he was gone. That’s not a corrupt man protecting his territory, that’s a man standing alone and refusing to shut up.
My vision blurs.
I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear hits the page in my hand, landing right on the margin next to Dad’s handwriting, a small dark circle spreading into the paper. I think, very clearly: I’m going to ruin the evidence.
I set the page down. Carefully. Align it with the others.
Then I just sit there and let it happen.
It’s not dramatic, no sobbing, no real sound.
Just tears running down my face in steady rivers, dropping off my chin onto my hands, onto my shirt, onto the bedspread inches from where Mara is sleeping.
Mine is the crying of someone who’s been holding it in so long that when it finally comes, it’s steady and impossible to stop.
I haven’t cried since I entered the Rot. Not once. Not when I lost the Hunt, not when they put my name in the ledger, not during the worst nights. I held it in, all of it, because crying in this place is a luxury no one can afford.
But my tears aren’t weakness, dammit. This is meeting my father again on the pages he left behind, hearing his voice go from polite to direct to desperate, and seeing his hand press hard into the paper next to a name he couldn’t figure out.
It’s the exquisite pain of meeting him and losing him again, all in the same moment. Every page in front of me confirms he was the man I knew, his conscience real, his efforts real, his concerns real.
And every page reminds me he’s gone, leaving me doubled over in agony.
Mara’s breathing is steady beside me. In the morning, I’ll tell her what I found.
I’ll match these pages to the letters and notes she’s hidden outside, and maybe between the two, we’ll start to put together a more complete story of what the hell went down in Rothwell, and what my dad was trying to do about it.
But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I sit on my side of the bed in a dead mall and I cry for my dad, quietly, so I don’t wake the only person left in the world who would understand why.
When the waterworks cease, I wipe my face with the back of my hand. I gather the papers, slide them into the plastic bag, and seal it with the tape that barely holds anymore.
I press the bag against my chest.
Then I slide everything under my side of the mattress for safekeeping, pull the blanket up, and lie down next to Mara. She’s warm. She smells unwashed, smoky, not herself, but her warmth is nice and I press my forehead against her shoulder blade and close my eyes.