Chapter 9: The Name Nobody Expected
Tyler's first official day was set for three weeks out.
In the meantime, Richard began quietly reviewing his staff — communications, access logs, anything that might show who Garrett Finch had reached out to.
He called me four days later.
"I found it," he said.
"Who?"
"His office manager.
A woman named Paula Strent.
She's been with the firm for six years." A pause.
"She and Finch were in contact eleven times over the past three weeks.
She deleted the messages but the server backup caught them."
"What did they say?"
"He was asking her to pull certain project files.
Specifically the materials documentation from the Daniel site.
The original orders."
"The ones that would show the substitution."
"Yes.
She hadn't done it yet.
But she was going to."
I sat down.
"What are you going to do?"
"I've already called my attorney.
And I've called the investigator handling Finch's case.
They're treating it as attempted interference with an ongoing investigation." He paused.
"Paula has been placed on immediate leave pending a formal review."
"Does Tyler know?"
"I'm calling him next."
"Richard." I stopped.
"You handled this the right way."
A brief silence.
"I'm trying to."
"I know."
When Tyler came home that evening, he was quiet in a different way than before.
Not nervous-quiet.
Settled-quiet.
"He found the leak," Tyler said.
"I know.
He called me first."
Tyler looked at me.
"He calls you a lot."
"He does."
"Do you mind?"
I thought about it honestly.
"No," I said.
"I don't."
Tyler nodded.
He sat down at the table.
"He told me something else.
About Daniel.
About what Daniel was like." He paused.
"He said Daniel used to bring his lunch to work in the same kind of container I use.
The blue one with the clip lid."
I didn't say anything.
"He noticed that on my second week," Tyler said.
"That's when he started paying attention to me."
A blue lunch container with a clip lid.
Eight months of weekends.
A business card with a handwritten number on the back.
A contract with a name already typed in.
"He's been carrying a lot," I said.
"Yeah." Tyler was quiet.
"I think he has."
He helped me make dinner.
We didn't talk much, but the silence was comfortable in the way it used to be when he was younger, before the world got complicated.
After dinner he went to his room and I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.
I thought about the dinner that had started all of this.
Richard standing behind me at the sink, his voice going flat, every trace of warmth leaving his face.
The fear I had felt.
The long weeks before that of watching my son disappear into someone else's orbit.
I thought about Donna telling me to find out what he wasn't saying before Tyler found out the hard way.
Tyler hadn't found out the hard way.
He'd found out the right way, at a kitchen table, with his mother beside him.
I finished my tea.
May you like
Washed the cup.
Turned off the kitchen light.
