"What? The version where I found safety violations and reported them and left because I wouldn't stay quiet about them." Marcus said his voice level. "Or the version where I was involved in the problem." Emily was very still. "The second one," she said quietly. That's not what happened.
I know. He stopped. You know, I made my own calls, she said. After I heard the rumor, I spoke to two people who were at Brentwell during that period. A project manager and an engineer who both left the company within a year of when you did.
She paused. They told me what actually happened. Marcus looked at her. Then why are you telling me what you heard? He asked. because I want you to know that someone is building something against you," she said.
"And I want you to know I found it before I believed it." The farmhouse was very quiet. Somewhere outside, a bird called once and went silent. Marcus stood in the middle of a room that was slowly being put back together and looked at a woman who had without being asked, without being told, gone looking for the truth instead of accepting the version that was handed to her. That was not nothing. That was in his experience an exceptionally rare thing.
Thank you, he said. She shook her head. Don't thank me. It's the minimum. She looked down at the new floorboards.
Who do you think it was? Someone who doesn't want me here, Marcus said. Who benefits if you leave? Marcus thought about that. Not because he didn't have a guess, but because saying it out loud would make it real and would start a chain of events he wasn't sure he was ready to start.
I don't know yet, he said. Emily looked at him with those eyes that weighed things. Yes, you do, she said. He was quiet. Marcus.
Her voice was different now, stripped of the professional layer, just direct and clear. My father trusts you. I trust you. But whoever is doing this isn't going to stop at rumors. That's not how these things work.
I know how these things work, he said. then you know that doing nothing is a decision too. He looked at her for a long moment. Outside the light was dropping the long late afternoon gold that precedes Georgia dusk. The kind that makes everything look slightly more significant than it might otherwise. What are you asking me to do?