No, he said. I don't know. But you think it is? A pause. I don't want to think it is.
That's different from what I asked. He looked at her. Yeah, he said quietly. I think it might be. She was quiet for a moment.
What do you do? I talk to him. Marcus said directly today. He set his coffee down. I don't accuse.
I tell him what I know. And I ask him what's true and I listen. And whatever he tells me, I deal with it from there. And if he did it, Marcus thought about 4 years about the man who'd sat across from him in his kitchen on a Saturday and said, "I'm not going anywhere." about the man who had been the steiest presence in the worst period of Carter restoration's history. "Then I have to know why," Marcus said.
"Before I decide anything, the why matters." Olivia looked at him with an expression he couldn't entirely name. It was something like admiration and something like grief and something like the recognition of equality in another person that you haven't been sure existed until you see it in action. Most people would just fire him, she said. Most people don't ask why, Marcus said. And most people miss the answer that would have changed everything.
He walked toward the property. He found Deshawn in the back section already working. Desawn, who was always already working, and he said, "Walk with me a minute." In the voice he used when something was real. Deshawn put his tools down. He turned and in that turn in the set of his shoulders in the thing that moved across his face in the half second be for he controlled it.
Marcus saw the answer before he asked the question. His heart dropped to somewhere around his knees. They walked to the far edge of the property away from where anyone could hear them and Marcus stopped and turned and looked at his friend of four years and said, "Tell me the truth all of it right now." Achon looked at the ground. Then his jaw was tight. It wasn't coastal.
He said it wasn't I didn't go to them. They came to me when 6 weeks ago. His voice was low. When the third contract fell through when I thought my son Marcus Jaylen's medical stuff, you know, I've been dealing with that. The specialist bills, the insurance fighting us on everything.
Deshawn. Marcus' voice was very steady, very controlled. Tell me what you did. They offered money, Deshaawn said. Not a job, just information about the company, where we were financially, what contracts we were bidding on, what our client relationships were.
He was looking at Marcus now, not flinching from it, which Marcus respected even in this moment. I passed two bids, told them what we were quoting on two jobs. That's it. That's all I gave them. I stopped.
I told them I was out after the second one, but they already had enough. Marcus said, "Yeah, a pause, Marcus. I know there's nothing I can say that makes that. Why didn't you come to me?" Marcus said, and his voice cracked. Not loudly, but there a fracture in the steadiness.