Chapter 6 - "Hello, Son"
Three weeks later, Russell walked into the conference room already smiling, already halfway through a joke about how I could have just asked him for more money instead of doing all this. He set his coffee down like a man expecting to be out in twenty minutes.
The smile didn't survive the second document.
"I've never seen that," he said.
"We have a witness who says otherwise," Renata said, and opened the door.
Walter walked in. Russell went the color of the table.
"Hello, son."
The floor tilted under me. "He's your father?"
"You have no idea what he was like after Mom died," Russell said, already on his feet.
"I was grieving," Walter said quietly.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Drinking. Missing payroll. Forgetting contracts," Russell snapped. "I was twenty-three, Diane. Somebody had to save what was left of the business, and it wasn't going to be him."
"You didn't save it," Walter said. "You transferred it. Into your name, out of mine, one signature at a time, and you told me every page was routine so I wouldn't waste time reading it."
"Oh, now you want to blame—"
"I was grieving, and you were fast, and I let you be fast because I didn't have anything left in me to argue with."
The room went very still.
"You said that to me," I said. "Word for word. That's exactly what you told me about the divorce papers."
"That's different," Russell said, smirking.
May you like
"How?"
He didn't have an answer.
