"The issue isn't my schedule," Callan said.
"The issue is that your personal circumstances have made you difficult."
Callan looked at Nadia and Samir. He wanted them to hear one thing clearly. "Document what we found. Don't change your recollection to make this meeting easier for anyone."
Blaine waited until they had left. Then he told Callan that the division was being reorganized and that his position might not survive unless he learned to be more cooperative.
Callan went back to his desk, opened the black notebook, and wrote down the date, time, attendees, and the precise language of the threat. He had done that before. This time, after a long pause, he turned to a fresh page and wrote a sentence that frightened him with its simplicity.
I cannot teach June to stand up for herself if I keep teaching myself to stay quiet.
On Wednesday the first separation proposal appeared in his inbox. It offered eight weeks of pay in exchange for an agreement that his work had been fully credited, the company's records were accurate, and he had no outstanding concerns. There was also a broad nondisparagement clause. Callan read it twice, then sent it to a lawyer whose number he had kept in his contacts from an old university friend. The lawyer confirmed what he already suspected: there was nothing ordinary about asking a departing employee to certify the accuracy of disputed records while the dispute remained unresolved.
That evening, Callan spread the papers across his small kitchen table after June had finished her homework. The apartment smelled of garlic, dish soap, and the cinnamon tea Mrs. Morales sometimes left at his door. Outside, rain blurred the lights of the elevated train. June sat beside him constructing a bridge from wooden craft sticks for her school's science fair. It was a careful project with two little towers, cotton-string suspension cables, and a handwritten sign that said WE ALL HELP HOLD IT UP.
"Daddy, does this side look crooked?" she asked.
Callan turned the bridge gently. "It's a little crooked."
"I thought you'd say it was perfect."
"Do you want me to say it's perfect, or do you want me to help make it stronger?"
June considered. "Stronger. But gently."
He smiled. "That's fair."
Together they replaced one crooked support and tested the bridge with a handful of coins. June counted each coin aloud as the structure took more weight. It held the first five, bowed under the sixth, and came apart with a soft clatter when she added the seventh. June stared at the pieces in disappointment.
"It failed," she whispered.
"It told us where to work next. That's different."
She looked at the broken bridge, then at the forms on the table. "Is that what your job is? You find the broken part?"
"Sometimes."
"And do people listen when you tell them?"
He could have invented an easy answer. She was seven. She had lost her mother. He wanted the world to feel safer than it was. But Hannah had never believed children were helped by cheerful lies.