Page 109 of Empty Net
Then I walk.
Not to the parking deck. Not to Gerald's desk. I walk upstairs still holding the stick because my hands did not get the message, and something old is opening inside me, not fear exactly, not anger yet, something before both. The body noticing danger before the mind gives it a name.
Caleb's office door is closed, and I open it without knocking because knocking belongs to a version of this conversation where I still believe there are rules that can protect anything. The stick catches the doorframe on the way in. I lean it against the wall and the sound of it is too loud, composite on drywall, a player's noise in an executive space. He is standing behind his desk with his phone in his hand and his face pale, and when he says my name it is the wrong sound, too careful and too late and still the sound my body wants to move toward.
It should help. It does not.
"Did you know?"
He comes around the desk. Stops halfway. "Alderman was coming to tell you."
That is an answer.
Not to the question I asked.
"Did you know?"
"Yes. This morning. Not long before you got the voicemail."
The words land with a clean, administrative precision that makes something in me go bright and ugly.
"This morning."
"Nolan, I wanted to call you."
"But you didn't."
"Legal told me not to contact anyone independently until they had the inquiry contained."
"Anyone."
"You know that's not what I mean."
"No, I think it's exactly what you mean."
His face tightens. "I was trying not to make it worse."
"You were trying to follow procedure."
"Yes."
"Good. Great. Procedure. That's always worked out beautifully for us."
The room is too small. His desk, the nameplate his mother carved, the monitors. All those clean surfaces. The whole carefully managed life where feelings become disclosures and disclosures become timelines and timelines become access logs someone can leak to a reporter with a Tampa photo and a deadline.
Caleb takes one breath. "The recusal was confidential. The leak is a breach."
"The recusal is why there is a leak."
He flinches, and for one bright, ugly second some old defensive part of me registers the hit as successful before the restof me catches up and understands what I have done. I know it is wrong. I know it and keep going because knowing has never stopped a puck once it is already off the blade.
"Nolan."
"You put us in a file."
"I disclosed a conflict so I wouldn't have power over your career."
"You put my name in a file."
