She drank her coffee.
At the door, she turned.
“I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good.”
She nodded.
Then I added, “But I hope you become someone who wouldn’t need to ask for it again.”
She stood very still.
“Me too.”
Then she left.
Maya started working for Vantage two weeks after the yacht incident.
Not because she had defended me.
Because when I offered her a reward, she refused it.
“I didn’t tell the truth for a job,” she said.
So I asked what she actually wanted.
Business school.
She had dropped out when her father died and her mother needed help with rent.
Vantage had a tuition program.
Maya entered it.
Two years later, she became the youngest analyst on Daniel’s restructuring team.
Daniel complained that she asked too many questions.
I told him that was why I’d hired her.
As for Liam, I didn’t see him for nearly a year.
Then one rainy Saturday morning, the bell over the coffee-shop door rang.
He walked in wearing work boots and a faded jacket.
There was grease beneath one thumbnail.
He saw me and stopped.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
He ordered coffee.
Black.
He paid.
Then he put a folded envelope on the counter.
“I don’t want anything.”
I looked at it.
