15. Nell #2
I stared at him.
The re-bid had come through two weeks ago. New specifications. Independent testing. A qualification lot with a deadline that had made Hazel look at me and ask if I was sure we wanted to try for it.
I'd told her we didn't have a choice. The hospital contract was forty percent of our annual revenue and if we lost it we'd be done by spring.
"You're saying he caused the re-bid."
"I'm saying the record named your mill. I'm saying the timing fits. I'm saying I worked it out and I think you should know."
My hands were flat on the desk. I didn't remember putting them there.
"What exactly did the disclosure say?"
"That Crowe sources blanket cloth from Ivester Woolen for its heritage collection. One line in a hundred-page document."
"One line."
"Yes."
"And the state read it and decided to make me prove I can still do the work."
Winston didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
The numbers on the production sheet were still wrong. Thirty-five hundred units. Five days.
I looked at Winston.
"The qualification lot is due in five days. We're running two shifts and we're still behind. If we don't make the deadline we lose the contract."
"I know."
"You know."
"I worked out the timing yesterday. The disclosure went public on the second of October. The re-bid notice came through on the thirteenth. Eleven days."
"And that's why you're here."
"That's why I'm here. I'm sorry."
He said it like he meant it.
"Does he know?" I asked. "Does Beckett know what that disclosure did to my mill?"
"No."
The answer came fast. Certain.
"You didn't tell him."
"No."
I looked at Winston. At the careful way he was standing. At the briefcase on the chair he hadn't opened and wasn't going to.
At the man who had spent twenty years making sure Beckett knew everything that mattered.
"Why not?"
"Because it isn't my job anymore."
The words landed flat. Final.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I resigned two weeks ago. It means I stayed long enough to close out the quarter and then I walked away."
I stared at him. "You resigned."
"Yes."
"After twenty years."
"Yes."
Winston picked up the briefcase. He didn't open it.
"I brought you nothing. No paper. No proof. You can check every word of it and I'd rather you did."
He said it the way a man says something he's thought through. Something he's decided is the right thing even if it costs him.
"Why did you really come here, Mr Obi?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Because that man handed you to me at a gala six years ago and told me to take care of you while he worked. And I watched him do it again and again for six years. And I'm done watching."
He turned toward the door.
I should have let him go.
I should have stayed quiet and let him walk out and gone back to the floor and the numbers and the thirty-five hundred units I still had to finish in five days.
But the question had been sitting in my chest for seven weeks. Since the morning I'd walked out of that workroom in New York and told Hazel that anything with his name on it went back.
Seven weeks and he hadn't tried once.
Not a call. Not a letter after the first one. Not a single attempt to say anything that wasn't written down and sealed in an envelope I'd put in a drawer.
The question came out before I could stop it.
"Then why hasn't he called me?"
Winston stopped.
He stood there with his hand on the doorframe and his back to me and I watched him decide whether to answer.
The machines were still running through the wall. Steady. Even. The sound I'd grown up with. The sound that meant work was getting done.
Winston turned around.
"You told him no calls. No deliveries. Nothing with his name on it. That man has never once in his life done what he was told. He's done that."
He picked up his coat.
I didn't move.
I didn't breathe.
"You're saying he's respecting my wishes."
"I'm saying he's doing exactly what you asked him to do. For the first time in his life, he's listening."
The words sat between us like something with weight.
Winston looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look that carries twenty years of watching somebody build something and then step away from it.
Then he put the coat over his arm and opened the door.
"Wait."
He stopped.
I didn't know what I was asking. I just knew I wasn't done.
"Where is he?"
Winston didn't answer right away.
When he did, his voice was quiet.
"I don't know."
"You don't know."
"No."
I stared at him. At Winston Obi, who had managed Beckett's calendar for two decades. Who knew where he was supposed to be every hour of every day. Who had called me more times than I could count to say Beckett was running late or stuck in a meeting or still at the workroom.
"You run his company. You've run his life for twenty years. You don't know where he is."
"Nobody does," Winston said.
"What do you mean nobody does?"
"I mean I've called every number I have. I mean the workroom is locked and the house is empty and nobody at Crowe has seen him in three weeks."
"Three weeks," I said.
"Yes."
"He resigned three weeks ago and disappeared."
"Yes."
"What about his apartment in the city?"
"Empty. The doorman hasn't seen him since early October."
"His phone?"
"Goes straight to voicemail. Has for three weeks."
"Email?"
"Nothing. Not to me, not to anyone at the company."
"Credit cards? Bank accounts?"
"I don't have access to those anymore. But if he's using them, he's not doing it anywhere I can trace."
I looked at Winston. At the careful way he was holding himself. Like a man delivering news he didn't want to be carrying.
"So he could be anywhere."
"Yes."
"He could be hurt. He could be in trouble."
"He could be. Or he could have decided he needed to disappear for a while and he's exactly where he wants to be."
I didn't know which was worse.
"And you don't think he's in danger."
"I think if Beckett Crowe wanted to be found, he'd be found. He doesn't want to be found."
"And you came here to tell me that."
"I came here to tell you all of it," Winston said. "Because you deserve to know."
The words hung there.
Nobody knew where Beckett Crowe was.
The man who'd built a billion-dollar fashion house. Who had photographers tracking his movements and a press office that fielded fifty calls a day. Who couldn't walk through an airport without someone recognizing him.
Nobody knew where he was.
The machines were still running. Dorcas's line, steady and clean. Ray's repairs holding. Kiana's station keeping pace.
Winston stood in the doorway with his coat over his arm and his briefcase in his hand and nothing else to say.
I looked at him. At the man who had driven five hours to tell me something that wasn't his job. Who had worked it out and thought I should know. Who had brought me nothing because he wanted me to prove it myself.
Who had stood in my mill office and told me that Beckett had obeyed the one thing I'd asked him to do when he'd never obeyed anything else in his life.
"Thank you."
The words came out quiet.
Winston nodded once.
Then he walked out.
I stood there in the mill office with my hands on the desk and the machines running through the wall and Beckett's letter in the drawer four feet away.
I didn't open it.
I didn't call anyone.
I didn't let myself believe a single word Winston Obi had just said, because believing it would cost more than I had left this week.
I went back to the floor.