Chapter 332: Business Insight

Business Insight ran its quiet read before Sean had consciously formed an impression.

Fifty-two years old. The outline said. He carried it in the specific way of someone who had been physically active earlier in life and had maintained the structure of that without maintaining the pace. Dark hair going gray at the temples. The careful clothing of someone who had thought about the occasion rather than dressing for any occasion, the specific middle register of someone who didn’t want to seem like they were trying too hard but had tried hard.

His hands were on the table.

Not fidgeting. Just present. The hands of someone who had decided to be visible rather than managed.

He saw Sean first.

Then Sophie beside him.

Something happened in his expression that was not performed. Just the specific thing that happened when someone had been building toward a moment for a long time and had just arrived inside it and was finding it larger than they’d modeled.

He started to stand.

"Don’t," said Sean.

Not unkindly. Just directly.

Richard sat back down.

Sean slid into the booth across from him. Sophie sat beside Sean, which she’d clearly thought about because she moved to that side without hesitation or negotiation.

The three of them looked at each other.

"Hi Dad," said Sophie. With the specific casual warmth of someone for whom this man had always been Dad and for whom that hadn’t changed just because the table had more people at it.

"Hi Soph," said Richard. His voice was steady. The careful steadiness of someone who had been practicing steady for a long time.

He looked at Sean.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"I said I would," said Sean.

"I know," said Richard. "I just." He stopped. "Thank you."

The waiter appeared. They ordered. Richard had clearly not been thinking about food because he looked at the menu for longer than it required and then ordered the first thing he’d been looking at without real attention. Sophie ordered with complete decisiveness. Sean ordered coffee.

When the waiter left the three of them were in the booth again and the ambient restaurant continued around them and Richard looked at his water glass briefly and then at Sean.

"I don’t know how to start," said Richard.

"Then don’t try to start anywhere specific," said Sean. "Just talk."

Richard held his water glass.

Business Insight was running its quiet assessment. The specific thing it did in every significant room, the accumulation of small data into a picture.

What it found was consistent with Eleanor’s file.

This was not a man performing remorse.

This was a man who had made a specific decision at twenty-four and had been living around the shape of that decision for twenty-eight years and had arrived at the specific tired honesty of someone who had stopped trying to explain it into something more manageable.

"I was twenty-four," Richard said. "That’s not an excuse. I know it’s not an excuse. But it’s the context. My father was." He paused. "My father was someone who had made a particular peace with the world in which some people’s losses were simply the cost of other people’s gains. He didn’t see it as cruelty. He just saw it as how things worked." He looked at his water. "I grew up inside that understanding. It was the air of the house."

"And when he told you to choose," said Sean.

Richard looked at him. "I chose wrong. I was twenty-four and I’d been told my entire life that the company was the thing that mattered and I believed it because it was the only thing I’d been given a framework for believing." He paused. "That’s not an excuse."

"You keep saying that," said Sean.

"Because it’s not one," said Richard. "I’ve had twenty-eight years to understand that it’s not an excuse. What it is, is the truth about why I made the choice I made. The why doesn’t change what the choice cost."

Sophie was listening with the still attention she had. Not inserting herself. Just watching.

"What did you know about her," said Sean. "After."

Richard held his water glass.

"I hired someone in 2013," he said. "To find out what had happened to her. I couldn’t find her directly without it being obvious and I couldn’t be obvious because." He stopped. "I told myself I couldn’t be obvious because of how she’d react. But honestly I think I was afraid of what I’d find." He paused. "They found her. They found she was a practicing architect. They found you. They found that she hadn’t told anyone about me and that she had." He stopped again. "That she had done everything alone."

"She did," said Sean.

"I know," said Richard quietly. "They told me. And I." He looked at the table. "I didn’t contact her. Which is the same wrong choice at a different moment. Different context. Same shape."

Sean looked at him across the table.

"Why didn’t you," he said.

Richard looked up. "Because what was I going to say. I’m sorry doesn’t give back twenty years. And I’d taken enough from your mother’s family already without walking back in to take more of her." He paused. "That’s what I told myself. I’m still not sure whether it was the right reasoning or another version of protecting myself from a conversation I didn’t know how to have."

"Probably both," said Sean.

Richard looked at him.

"People’s reasons are usually both," said Sean. "The true version and the convenient version existing simultaneously."

Something moved through Richard’s expression. Not surprise exactly. The specific adjustment of someone encountering an accuracy they hadn’t expected from the direction it came from.

"Yes," said Richard. "Both."

The food arrived. They were quiet while the waiter arranged things. Sophie thanked the waiter specifically, which she’d clearly absorbed from somewhere.

When the waiter left Richard looked at the food he’d ordered without appetite.

"The Walsh family," said Sean. "What you looked for in 2019."

Richard held his fork without using it.