15. Delia
DELIA
The carnival money cleared on a Tuesday. I sat at my desk and watched the confirmation email come through and felt nothing. The purchase could move forward. Walt was recovering. The season was still running. I’d done what I came back to do.
I picked up the phone to call Roz and put it back down. I didn’t want to hear myself say it out loud like it mattered.
I opened the drawer instead. The ring was still there, tucked into the corner where I’d put it.
The letter was underneath it, folded and unfolded so many times the creases were starting to tear.
I hadn’t told anyone about either of them.
Not Roz. Not the lawyer. I’d read the letter again two nights ago.
I could have recited it by now if someone asked. Nobody was asking.
I pushed the drawer closed and went back to the invoices.
I heard the knock an hour later. The front desk was closed for the afternoon, so I walked out myself.
A man was standing in the lobby. He was older, maybe mid-fifties, wearing a jacket and tie that looked a little too formal for the Ashbury.
I recognized him after a second. Marcus Reyes.
Grant’s COO. I’d met him at the centennial, and he’d been on the video call back in November when I’d asked for the loan.
“Mrs. Holbrook,” he said. “I’m sorry to come by without calling first. Do you have a few minutes?”
I didn’t correct the name. I stepped back and held the door open. “Come in.”
He followed me into my office. I didn’t sit down. I stayed standing by the desk. He didn’t sit either.
“I handed in my notice this morning,” he said. “I’m not here as Grant’s COO anymore. I’ve worked for your husband nineteen years, and I’d like to say the next part as a person and not as his COO. You can tell me no.”
I stared at him. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. “You resigned?”
“This morning. Before I drove over.”
I crossed my arms. “Why?”
“So you’d know that what I’m about to tell you isn’t his words coming out of my mouth.” He paused. “And so you’d know I’m saying it because I think you should hear it, not because I work for him.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
“Can I tell you?” he asked.
I nodded.
He took a breath. “Three weeks ago, Grant sent a letter to the board of the fund that was backing the national expansion. He told them what Corinne Sayer did to you. He told them he was walking away from the deal, and that they should remove her from the fund permanently or he’d make sure every outlet that covered the launch knew why he pulled out.
He signed it. I saw the letter before he sent it. ”
I felt my stomach drop. I didn’t move.
“Two days later, he signed over his authority at the company. Permanently. He did it in front of his lawyer and me. I have a copy of the document.” Marcus’s voice was steady.
He wasn’t pleading. He was just saying it.
“He’s been working the five a.m. shift at the Ashbury for weeks.
Under a name that isn’t his. And he put it in writing, twice, that his name was never supposed to be attached to any of it.
That you were never supposed to hear it from me. ”
I couldn’t breathe. I shook my head. “That’s not?—”
“I went looking for him,” Marcus said quietly.
“Four days before the carnival. He’d gone dark on the record and I didn’t know where he was.
I found him here at five in the morning with a mop.
He was wearing a county jacket. He told me to leave.
He sent me the same instruction in writing afterwards.
Twice. His name doesn’t get attached. You don’t hear it from me. ”
I sat down. I didn’t mean to. My legs just gave out.
Marcus didn’t move. He didn’t try to say anything else. He stood there and waited.
I looked up at him. “If that’s true, why hasn’t he called me? Why hasn’t he fought any of this?”
Marcus didn’t hesitate. “You told him you weren’t asking him for anything. And you told him he should know what you wanted without having to ask. He took you at your word.”
The air went out of the room.
I couldn’t say anything. I just sat there with my hands in my lap and stared at the desk.
Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m going to go now. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
I heard him walk to the door. I heard it open. I didn’t look up.
“Mrs. Holbrook,” he said. I looked at him. He was standing in the doorway with his hand on the frame. “He didn’t ask me to come here. He doesn’t know I’m telling you this.”
Then he left.
I sat there alone for a long time. I didn’t cry. I didn’t move. I just sat there with my hands folded on the desk and tried to breathe.
I didn’t believe the rink part. I couldn’t. It was too big. Grant Holbrook didn’t mop floors at five in the morning under someone else’s name. That wasn’t real.
But the rest of it. The letter to the fund. The authority he’d signed away. Marcus had resigned before he came here. He’d walked away from nineteen years.
I stood up. I didn’t know what I was doing. I walked out of the office and down the hall. The building was quiet. Most of the staff had gone home. I stopped at the machine-room door.
The clipboard was hanging on its nail. It had been there for as long as I could remember. Walt used to write the readings on it every two hours, day after day, year after year. I’d seen it a thousand times.
I took it off the nail.
The top pages were from the crisis. I flipped through them slowly. The chiller failure. The four days before the carnival. Thirty-one hours of entries. Every two hours. No gaps. Two nights.
The handwriting wasn’t Walt’s.
I knew that handwriting. I’d been looking at it for weeks. I’d folded it and unfolded it so many times the paper was starting to fall apart.
I turned the page. There was an entry at 3:04 in the morning.
The clipboard was shaking in my hands. The building hummed around me. I stood there in the hallway with the light buzzing overhead and stared at the numbers and the handwriting I knew and couldn’t look away.