Page 44 of Smoke and Glitter

That tells me more about what happened between them than anything Sam has.

Finding the former partner is easy. Understanding what might make him move takes longer.

He owns a restaurant on the north side now. The reviews are good. So is business, from the look of it. His social media is full of staff dinners, charity events and construction pictures from a second location he's getting ready to open.

I keep scrolling, waiting to find something that makes him easy to hate.

Nothing does. He's not a monster. That would be simpler. He's a man with a business he cares about and another one coming, which means he has something Sam hasn't had for three years.

A reason to finish this.

I go back to the dissolution filing. The problem isn't really the paperwork. It's getting two men who clearly never want to speak again through one conversation long enough to sign it.

I close the laptop. Then open it again.

The second night, I stop researching and start building.

Sam has already spent three years not making this call, so the first thing I decide is that nobody gets to make it for him.

No lawyer opening the conversation. No formal letter arriving on his desk. No third person giving either of them somewhere to hide.

Sam calls him. After that, the problem gets easier.

The former partner wants the same thing Sam does, even if neither of them has admitted it yet. He has a new restaurant to open. Sam wants Pilsen. Neither one benefits from dragging a dead company behind them for another three years.

So I start there. Clean dissolution. Quiet. Done.

I write the opening line, hate it and delete it. The next one sounds too much like a lawyer despite the fact that I am very much not one.

By the third version, I can hear Sam saying it.

That's the one I keep. Then I write what the other man is most likely to say back. And what Sam says after that.

If he claims he thought the company was already dissolved, Sam doesn't argue about whose fault it was. He brings him back to the signature. If he says he wants his lawyer involved, fine. Sam gives him room to do that without turning one page into a war. If he gets angry, Sam doesn't have to meet him there.

Every version of the conversation comes back to the same place.

Finish it.

I work until my coffee goes cold, then make another cup and keep going.

At some point I pull up the coverage surrounding the new restaurant again. The opening has enough attention that a public dispute with a former partner would be inconvenient.

Useful information. I do not put it in the script. Sam doesn't need to threaten him. The man already knows what he has to lose. I make a list of the trade outlets covering the opening anyway. That part is for me. By the time I'm finished, the document is three pages long.

No big speech. No clever trap. Nothing designed to punish anybody for what happened three years ago.

Just a path through the conversation Sam hasn't been willing to have.

I read it from the beginning and make myself stop changing things.

Every branch ends in the same place. Sign the paper. Finish the company. Get Pilsen. It's after two when I finally set the laptop aside.

I've spent four hours across two nights figuring out how to get Sam the bar he told me about before either of us was willing to say much of anything about what was happening between us.

A few days ago, Anna offered me London. I said no before Sam woke up. Now I'm sitting in my apartment building a plan for something he hasn't even told me he needs.

The thought sits there long enough to make me uncomfortable. I don't examine it too closely. The next morning, I print the pages at work and slide them into a plain envelope. No note. He'll know who it's from.