Page 96 of Split Decision

I hold on for a moment, then let her go.

"The kids have been asking," she says.

"Tell them I'm back."

"I already did." She eyes my crutches with what I can only describe as a personally offended assessment. "How long?"

"Three more weeks."

"Mm." She holds the boardroom door open. "There's coffee."

The boardroom has changed in a way I can't immediately name. Not the furniture, not the lighting, not the photographs on the wall. Something more subtle—the way the room holds itself. The audit documentation is stacked neatly at the far end of the table, which no one put there for my benefit because no one knew I'd arrive early. Someone put it there because it belongs at the center of the conversation.

I sit down and open the first folder.

The language is familiar.

That's what I notice first. Not the content—the content is procedural, standard, exactly what an audit report should look like. But certain phrases in the board communicationsummaries, the ones that were written during the weeks I was stepping back, have a specific cadence.

Temporary distance from any figure currently under regulatory review.

Protect the organization through strategic insulation.

Narrow exposure before the narrative forms.

I've heard all of those. Said in that same tone. I heard them in my own kitchen, from Marin, in early December.

I sit very still and read through the rest of the summary.

The recommendations in these board communications predated several of Marin's actual meetings with the board. That's what I'm seeing. The language arrived before the person it's associated with was formally involved in decision-making.

Someone was advising before they were officially advising.

I close the folder.

Luke is at the gym. He's started working with a local trainer in the gap before he decides what comes next—a title fight, a different camp, something. He's not directionless. He's deliberate. I know this about him.

I take a photo of the summary page on my phone.

I take photos of three more.

Then I close the folder, set it back exactly where I found it, and wait for the board to arrive.

Brandon bringsMarin to dinner at Luke's parents' house on a Saturday. He doesn't announce it in advance. He texts Luke that afternoon.

Bringing someone.

Then Luke texts me, and I spend the drive over deciding that I'm going to sit with whatever I feel rather than performing either warmth or suspicion.

Luke's mother, Linda, is gracious in the way she's always been—present, attentive, a woman who reads a room without appearing to. She's shaking hands with Marin in the entryway when we arrive, and I watch the introduction from the doorway.

Marin in a social context is different from Marin in a professional one. The blazer is gone—she's wearing something simple, dark, unpretentious. Her posture is the same. The steadiness is the same. But she's slightly reduced the frequency of her professional precision, in the way a very capable person does when they want to appear approachable. It's well done.

Too well done.

That's not a fair thought, I tell myself. People who are good at their jobs don't stop being good at them on weekends. Competence isn't evidence of anything.

"Andi." Brandon crosses the room and hugs me carefully around the crutches. "How are you feeling?"