But for two years he said nothing.
I sit with that for a long time.
The deposition request is still face-down on the corner of my desk where I put it this morning. I haven't touched it since. At some point in the last hour the afternoon light shifted and now it's coming through the west-facing windows at that low Los Angeles angle that turns everything amber, the city outside going golden and gridlocked.
I watch a hawk circle once above the building across the street. It drops out of sight between the towers and doesn't come back.
I've been sitting here for a while now, not working, which is not something I do. Even when the work is terrible and the news is bad and the pile on the corner of my desk is six inches thick, I work because it’s the only part of this I can control. But I've been sitting here looking at the city and thinking about James Dupree, and I can’t do anything else.
Thirty years of Sunday lunches. Garage afternoons with my father, their voices low and unhurried, the sound of two men who had known each other long enough to not need to pretend. James asking about my school and my first job. James bringing the same six-pack of craft beer every time like a man who had found his lane and stayed in it. James was always steady, warm and kind. I don't know what to do with that now.
I think about Ashley Price. She was seventeen years old when she wrote the email to her brother in a library in Mississippi, the email she wasn’t sure if anyone would read. She asked him to look after Olive. She didn't ask him to build an empire in her name or spend thirty years holding onto her death like a debt he couldn't pay off.
James knew all of this. He's known for two years.
I close the file on my laptop. Pick up my jacket. Turn off the desk lamp and walk out.
I call Jade from the parking garage and she picks up on the second ring.
"I need to talk to you tonight.”
“I’ll be home soon,” she says, without bothering with questions.
Jade isat the kitchen table when I get in, deep in her book. There’s a specific stillness to her when the writing isn’t going well. Her shoulders are relaxed, one hand is loose around her water glass, and her eyes are moving across the screen. She looks up when I come through the door and I watch her face shift.
I sit down across from her and she closes her laptop. I don't know how to start so I just start. "My investigators found James in the Richard’s documentation," I say. "Two years ago, he found out his money was connected to Richard's network. He said nothing.”
The file.The timestamp. The two years of Sunday lunches and craft beer and follow-up questions about her book, all of it sitting on top of a secret that could put my father in prison. I lay it out clean, no editorializing, no telling her what to make of it. I lay it out in order.
She doesn't move while I talk. Her eyes are steady. She has a quietness to her that’s the opposite of absence. When I finish, she's quiet for a moment that stretches long enough that I can hear the refrigerator hum.
"He knew," she says.
"Two years."
She nods. Something crosses her face. It’s not shock, but I don't know what it is exactly. I've watched her absorb hard things before. James existing at all. My father's silence. Richard Hale’s full story. She always comes through the other side with more clarity. It’s almost as if difficulties sharpen her rather than blunt her.
"Give me a day," she says finally. "Before you tell your father."
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
She nods again and looks away.
I stand and walk to the window. Not because there's anything out there worth looking at. Just because I need to put some distance between myself and all of this. The city below is fully dark now, the grid of it spreading out in every direction, small lit windows stacked forty stories high.
Behind me I hear her set her water glass down.
Jade doesn't fill the silence. Doesn't reach for me or offer the reassuring version of this or tell me it's going to be okay. She just lets me stand at the window for as long as I need to.
When I turn back to the room, Jade gives me a small smile.
19
JADE
The drive to Phoenix’s parents’ house takes forty minutes. I know what I'm going to say. I've known since last night when Phoenix told me about the timestamp. I don't need to rehearse it. I just need to get there.
The gates open when I pull up, which means Olive was watching for me. The circular drive is quiet, just James's car and Olive's and the gardener's truck parked along the far wall. I sit in my car for a moment after I turn off the engine. The jasmine is strong today, coming through the cracked window, that thick sweet smell I've come to associate with this place, with all of those Sunday afternoons. It's a beautiful morning. That feels beside the point.
