Chapter 12 - The Last Person On Charles’S Payroll
Damian moved first.
He shoved Noah and Mia behind a stone planter and took the impact on his side.
The car clipped him, struck the courthouse steps, and stopped in a cloud of dust.
Police pulled the driver out.
It was Dr. Cole.
The hospital administrator had been released on bail two days earlier.
He shouted that Charles had ruined his life.
Not that he had ruined lives. Charles.
Even then, he blamed the man who paid him rather than the choices he made.
Damian spent four days in the hospital with a fractured hip and three broken ribs.
Noah brought him a paper flower.
This one was worse than the first.
Too much glue. One petal upside down.
“It’s crooked,” Damian said.
Noah nodded. “Mom says that’s okay.”
Damian looked at me.
I pretended to read a magazine.
Mia climbed onto the bed despite the nurse’s warning and placed a sticker on Damian’s forehead.
It said GOOD TRY.
He wore it through a board interview on television.
The clip went viral.
Life after the trials was not clean.
Noah had nightmares. Mia sometimes packed a bag and sat by the front door without knowing why. I overreacted to locked rooms. Damian checked every drink twice and could not sleep in hotels.
We went to therapy separately and together.
Some sessions ended with insight.
Some ended with Noah hiding under a chair while Mia corrected the therapist’s grammar.
Damian rented a modest house two blocks from ours. Modest for him meant six bedrooms, but he was trying.
He asked before visiting. He learned to hear no.
One rainy evening, he stood on my porch holding takeout and said, “I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good opening.”
“I’m asking whether I can stay for dinner.”
“The children invited you.”
“I know. I’m asking you.”
I stepped aside.
We ate noodles from cartons. Noah dropped one on Damian’s shirt. Mia said it improved the shirt.
After the children slept, Damian and I sat on the kitchen floor because the new table had arrived with only three legs.
He held the instruction sheet upside down.
“You built a global logistics network,” I said.
“That network had employees.”
I took the paper from him.
A long silence settled between us.
Not empty. Just unfinished.
“I hated you,” I said.
“I know.”
“I still do sometimes.”
“I know.”
“You say that too much.”
“I—” He stopped. “Fair.”
I laughed.
He looked startled, then smiled.
It was not romance. Not yet.
It was a room where neither of us had to pretend.
The next morning, Marcus called.
Julian had escaped during a prison transport after a staged medical emergency.
A guard was missing.
And inside Julian’s abandoned cell, investigators found a photograph of the twins leaving school.
On the back he had written:
May you like
THE FAMILY STILL OWES ME.
