Chapter 7 — Everything He Remembered

Miriam called before I could put my phone away.

“Does Adrian know who currently has access to that office?”

I looked at him.

He nodded and reached for the tablet.

“Julian,” I read aloud. “And the warehouse manager.”

“Names, addresses, anything he remembers. Don’t go there yourselves.”

“We weren’t planning to.”

Adrian gave me a look.

“You weren’t planning to,” I corrected.

Miriam didn’t laugh.

“I’ll start the preservation requests. His business records may affect more than the dispute with Julian. He needs his own counsel before discussing everything in detail.”

“He knows.”

Adrian touched my wrist.

On the screen, he had typed another name.

Peter Lang.

The finance director.

“He might have copies,” I told her.

“Good. Let me find him.”

After the call, Adrian rested his head against the pillow.

“You can still change your mind about telling me things,” I said.

His eyes opened.

“No.”

“I mean things that might put you in trouble.”

“I know what you mean.”

The sentence came slowly, but it was complete.

I looked down at our hands.

His thumb moved against my wrist.

“You asked,” he said. “I answered.”

For once, I let that be enough.

Over the next six days, his doctors worked through the records they could obtain, while Miriam kept me informed of the separate legal inquiries.

There were medications documented in one set of records and absent from another. There were explanations that changed depending on who had written them.

Reyes was careful when she spoke to us.

“His original injuries were serious,” she said. “We’re not going to rewrite that because he’s improving.”

“But the treatment mattered,” I said.

“There are substantial concerns about how it was prescribed and recorded. Those concerns need investigation.”

Adrian watched her without blinking.

When she left, he said, “He told them I wasn’t there.”

“Harlan?”

“Yes.”

“What do you remember?”

His jaw tightened.

I moved the tablet closer.

“You don’t have to tell me all of it now.”

“I want to.”

He remembered stretches of darkness without time. Voices that seemed close, then far away. Days he couldn’t separate from dreams.

Some things were clearer.

Julian complaining about a lender who wouldn’t accept his signature.

Harlan saying another assessment would only confuse the family.

An argument about whether Adrian’s old attorney should be allowed upstairs.

“Did you hear dates?”

“Sometimes.”

“Names?”

He nodded.

I wrote them down, leaving space beside each one.

Things he remembered.

Things someone else might be able to verify.

I refused to let the two become interchangeable.

At one point, he stopped speaking.

His gaze fixed on the window.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“Adrian.”

“Julian asked whether I could feel anything.”

I set down the pen.

“What did Harlan say?”

“That it wasn’t useful to speculate.”

I waited.

“Julian stood beside the bed. He squeezed my shoulder.”

His fingers curled on the blanket.

“He said if I could hear him, I should understand he was taking care of everything.”

I didn’t ask how long he’d tried to move afterward.

I put my hand beside his and let him decide whether to take it.

He did.

Briggs came that evening carrying a small drive and a paper envelope.

“I should have brought these sooner.”

I stood.

“What are they?”

“Some recordings. Copies from the house system.”

Adrian looked at him.

Briggs stayed near the doorway.

“The camera in the bedroom captured more than I was comfortable with. I complained after the first month. Julian said it was necessary for safety.”

“So you saved footage?” I asked.

“Three clips. Different days. I was trying to compare how Mr. Voss reacted when people came in.”

“Did you alter them?”

“No. I copied them. There should still be dates and the original filenames.”

I called Miriam before we opened anything.

She arranged to receive the drive and asked Briggs to explain exactly how he had obtained it.

Only afterward did we view copies she had prepared for us.

In the first clip, Adrian’s eyes were open.

He seemed to turn toward Briggs’s voice.

In the second, Harlan stood beside the bed while Julian spoke on the phone.

“He’s comfortable,” Julian said. “No, another examination won’t change anything.”

The final clip showed Briggs asking Harlan whether the hospital specialist should return.

Harlan didn’t answer the question.

“You’ve worked for this family long enough to know when a matter has been settled.”

Briggs stood beside me as the recording ended.

“I told myself a doctor knew more than I did.”

“He did know more,” I said. “That’s why you asked him.”

“I kept asking less.”

Adrian’s gaze remained on him.

Briggs swallowed.

“I was afraid Julian would send me away. Then there would be nobody here who remembered what you’d been like.”

“You could have called,” Adrian said.

The older man nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

It hurt to watch.

It needed to hurt.

Adrian looked toward the drive.

“You kept those.”

“Yes.”

“Now tell them everything.”

Briggs straightened.

“I will.”

Two days later, Miriam found Peter Lang.

He agreed to meet at her office, provided we didn’t announce it to anyone connected with the company.

I went without Adrian. The trip would have exhausted him, and Peter had asked to speak privately first.

He arrived in a raincoat with a folder held against his chest.

“Julian dismissed me four months ago.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t approve a set of transfers.”

He placed copies of correspondence on Miriam’s desk.

Several dates matched the arguments Adrian remembered hearing.

I felt a strange, cold relief.

Not because the records proved every word.

Because there was finally something outside Adrian’s damaged body that supported him.

Peter kept glancing at his phone.

“Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

“My daughter.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen.”

He looked at me then.

“Last week, a man called her by name outside our house. Asked whether her father was still doing favors for Adrian.”

Miriam stopped writing.

Peter pulled the folder back toward him.

“I’ll give you the records. But I’m not putting my child in danger.”

I could have said Adrian would protect him.

I could have promised things I had no power to deliver.

Instead, I said, “Then we discuss protection before we discuss anything else.”

Miriam nodded.

We spent the next hour planning how Peter could provide information without being left alone with the consequences.

When I returned to the hospital, Adrian listened without interrupting.

“Don’t call your old men,” I said when I finished.

His face hardened.

“He threatened a child.”

“And if you send someone to threaten him back, what happens to Peter’s testimony?”

Adrian looked away.

Then he reached for his phone.

I waited.

He called his attorney.

It was a small thing to anyone who didn’t know him.

To me, it meant he had heard what I was asking.

That night, Miriam sent a message.

Peter had received a notice about the South Branch property.

The warehouse was being sold.

The office containing the original records was scheduled to be cleared before the end of the week.

Julian had signed the instruction that afternoon.