“They fixed it.”
“Yes.”
“About time.”
He stared at Isaiah’s photograph.
Then:
“Your daddy once fired me.”
Lenora turned.
“What?”
“Three days.”
“Why?”
“I drank half a bottle of wine after close.”
She stared.
“Dad?”
“Caught me.”
“What did Thomas do?”
“Wanted to fire me permanently.”
“Isaiah said I had a newborn and one stupid night didn't equal my whole life.”
Raymond smiled.
“Then he suspended me.”
“Made me repay the bottle.”
“And gave me every Sunday brunch shift for two months.”
Lenora laughed.
“That was punishment.”
“Exactly.”
Raymond looked toward the photograph.
“People make him sound like a saint now.”
“He wasn't.”
“Good.”
Lenora smiled.
The dead becoming human again was another kind of correction.
Meredith became a grandmother twice more.
She grew less involved in restaurants.
More involved in a literacy foundation.
At seventy-four, she invited Lenora to one fundraiser.
Lenora attended.
Not because they had become best friends.
They had not.
But respect had settled into something durable.
During dinner, another older donor leaned toward Meredith and whispered:
“Who is the woman at your table?”
Meredith looked at Lenora.
Then at the donor.
“Lenora Brooks.”
The donor waited.
Apparently expecting context.
Meredith smiled.
“That is enough information.”
Lenora heard.
She said nothing.
Later in the elevator:
“Show-off.”
Meredith laughed.
“Growth.”
“Expensive.”
“Very.”
Peter left Vesper Hospitality after NorthStar replaced him as CEO in year six.
Not scandal.
Strategy.
He had stayed through integration.
Then both sides wanted different things.
He founded a smaller restaurant investment firm.
Before leaving, he called Lenora.
“I understand Dad better now.”
She frowned.
“That sounds dangerous.”
Peter laughed.
“I built something under someone else’s capital.”
“Then one day I realized they thought their risk meant they owned every future version of my work.”
Lenora listened.
“I got angry.”
“Then I thought about Dad and Isaiah.”
She smiled.
“Annoying, isn't it?”
“Very.”
He continued.
“I still think Dad did more after 1998.”
“Maybe.”
“That doesn't mean Isaiah’s remaining units disappeared.”
“No.”
“Both.”
Lenora laughed.
“Therapy?”
“NorthStar HR.”
“Worse.”
Peter eventually wrote a private family history.
Not a book.
No publisher.
Thirty pages for his children.
He sent it to Lenora before giving it to them.
She returned seventeen comments.
He called.
“Seventeen?”
“You wrote ‘Isaiah withdrew from the business.’”
“He did.”