Those were different things.
“Please tell Laura to call Michael if there's something she needs,” I said.
“Gregory, don't do this.”
I looked at my left hand.
The ring was in a drawer at home now.
“I'm already doing it.”
I ended the call.
Sat there while my hazard lights ticked.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I thought about every small sign.
Late meetings.
Her phone face down at dinner.
A new passcode after years of using the same one.
Austin conferences that gained an extra night.
The way she smiled at messages without realizing she was smiling.
Her sudden interest in clothes Daniel supposedly said looked “more founder-like.”
I had noticed.
Then chosen trust.
People like to call that foolishness afterward.
I do not.
Trust is not stupidity merely because somebody misuses it.
I put the truck in gear.
Drove to Garland.
A family had three children and a furnace that had stopped overnight.
Their house was forty-nine degrees inside.
The father apologized twice for calling early.
I told him that was what the number was for.
Then I spent ninety minutes fixing his heat.
Work helped.
A broken furnace has the decency to tell you what it needs.
Laura's Tuesday went differently.
I learned the details later.
Some came from her.
Some from Pam.
Some appeared in the financial records.
Around eleven that morning, Lone Star Mercantile called Laurel Row.
A vice president politely explained that the bank had received notice from counsel for Gregory Hayes stating that no new collateral pledge or guarantee had been authorized.
The bank therefore could not proceed on the financing package as presented.
Laura met Daniel for lunch at a bistro near the showroom.
She expected reassurance.
She told me that months later.
“I thought he'd say we would figure it out.”