Page 53 of The Quiet After The Fall

She keeps her hands on the wheel, staring at me through the rearview with a smirk, deciding whether she needs to hit me harder.

Message received. I limp back a step, then another, giving her the room she’s been asking for since I came over here.

She backs up and throws it into drive, rolling her window down. “If I tell you to move, you move. I won’t ask twice.”

“You could have fucking killed me,” I say, knowing it’s a lie but needing to get to her.

“Leave me alone, Knox. I mean it.”

She guns it out of the lot and onto the empty street before I can respond.

I stand there in the empty spot, thighs throbbing, watching her taillights until they’re gone.

I feel nothing but satisfaction. She’s going home alone and that prick won’t talk to her again. I’m a piece of shit and I know it, but I don’t care.

Sawyer can run me over with her car every day if she needs to. I refuse to give in.

I throw myself into work because it’s the only thing in my life that keeps me occupied enough to not think about Sawyer. It’s been over a week since I set my eyes on her at the bar. I haven’t tried to see her since…not because I’ve let her go, there’s no fucking way, but because showing up again right now while she’s this heated would be a mistake. I need to give her room to breathe. And I’d bet money that she’s thinking about me too.

The office is empty this early. No one shows up before seven, so it’s the best time to get work done.

I scroll through the Wonder World Phase II folder photos for the third time this week. There’s permits, contracts, invoices. The same boring mess I’ve already gone through over and over and found nothing in.

When my eyes start to glaze over, I decide to print everything out. It’s risky. My father could catch me with the literal paper trail, but maybe holding it in my hands and searching on actual paper will help.

Linda, my father’s part-time assistant, comes up behind me when I’m halfway through printing and scares the shit out of me.

“You’re here early, Knox,” she says.

“Linda, hi.” I crowd my body closer to the printer so she can’t peek. I love Linda, but she’s my father’s eyes and ears in this place. “Couldn’t sleep…figured I’d get a jump on some paperwork before everyone needs something from me today.”

She raises an eyebrow, but it’s friendly, not suspicious. Linda’s worked for my father since before I was born, back when there was an actual building full of people instead of this glorified storage unit. If anyone alive knows where the real bodies are buried in this company, it’s her.

“You sound just like him,” she says, nodding toward my father’s empty office. “Up before the sun, working himself half to death.” She pats my arm on her way past, headed for her desk. “Don’t burn out like he did, sweetheart. There’s coffee in the back if you want it.”

“Thanks, Linda.”

I don’t take a full breath until she’s gone.

The printer spits out the last page and I organize the stack, tapping it with unsteady hands.

It’s forty-something pages, most of the fields handwritten. I’m especially curious to go through the ones with David Thorne’s signature on them.

What could the company have to do with Wonder World? Clearly we were involved in the construction somehow. Is that why we’ve always gone there every summer? Was it some kind of perk?

I hurry back into my office with the stack before Linda comes back. There’s something here, I know it.

I spread the pages across my desk in some semblance of order…permits first, then invoices, contracts last, and start working backward, searching for something between the lines. David Thorne’s name shows up more than I expected. So does my father’s, on documents dated years before the scandal broke.

My phone buzzes before I can dig in.

Tyler R: hey man a bunch of us are thinking about doing something for owen this weekend…like a memorial. you should come.

Fucking Tyler R. One of Owen’s high school football buddies. Why does he even have my number?

Tyler R: no pressure just figured I’d ask.

What kind of thing are they talking about? There was already the spectacle of his funeral. I swipe the text away and put my phone on the desk. Back to the documents…but now the numbers blur together and my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth.