Page 72 of The Quiet After The Fall

Ella: knox

Ella: where are you

Ella: it’s kind of important can you just call

They escalate until finally.

Ella: this is fucked up. whatever it is you’re doing, I hope it’s worth it.

“Shit,” I mutter, swiping over to my voicemails.

There’s one from my mother. I’m about to delete it, but at the last second, I hit play. She sounds off, her voice’s smaller than usual. “Knox, honey, it’s Mom. Just—can you call me when you get this? It’s nothing bad. I promise—just call me back.”

Weird.

I was expecting her to be on me about disappearing, but she’d have mentioned that.

The next is from my father. It’s from an hour ago. Might as well get it over with. “Call me.”

So nice of him to say hello or ask how I’m doing. Prick. He can kiss my ass.

I take another minute to organize my thoughts, then drive over to the market for an energy drink and some chips, before heading to one of my favorite spots to sit. I’ve come over here a lot in the past five years, always alone, and always when I needed a minute.

It’s lake access but the guardrail’s busted, and the boat launch a half mile up the road is much nicer, so this place is always empty. I roll down the windows and cut the engine, sitting with my hands gripping the wheel until I realize I can let them go.

Just hearing my father’s voice—those two words, has me on edge.

I crack open the can, and take a long sip. I need to prolong this day. I’m not ready for it to be over.

The documents are still sitting in the backseat where I left them yesterday. Forty-something pages of permits, invoices, contracts. Wonder World, phase two. No better time than now to give it another look.

I pull the pile into my lap and take my time going through each page. There’s no one around the corner to sneak up on me like at the office.

I go slowly, reading each line instead of scanning for words that ring a bell.

Page after page, there’s nothing that jumps out at me. I finish my drink, and eat every crumb from the chip bag, still hungry for something more substantial. I’m just about ready to call it a night when I find something. Almost the last page in the stack, some sort of geological technical report. I’ve seen these types of reports before, but I’ve always passed them off to engineering. There’s tables and numbers that I couldn’t figure out the meaning to even if I stared at it for days.

What catches my eye is the handwritten note stapled to the front.

Rich—

Velocity Site Report. Rick’s notes at the bottom. Might have to postpone.

—David

My mouth hangs open and I flip back to the report. Down at the bottom, I find a section titled preliminary assessment.

Recommend supplemental piling and a redesigned footing system before any structure exceeding a specified load is erected on the site.

I read it over and over, hoping I’m seeing something different. But it’s all there, plain as day.

David Thorne wanted to postpone Velocity’s construction due to soil instability, or at least that’s what it seems. Him and whoever this Rick guy was advised it and I’d bet my life it was my father who pushed forward.

My fucking father is responsible for what happened to Owen. To all those people.

No. That can’t be.

I flip through the rest of the stack looking for something, anything, that says differently. A correction. Proof they actually postponed and my suspicions are wrong.