Bullies Targets The Wrong A Waitress — Unaware She's A Karate Black Belt Working Part-Time
Chapter 30
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He asked if Roy was still in the kitchen."Should be," Dotty said, puzzled. "Why?""Because this concerns him too," Walt said. "More than either of you probably realize. More than he realizes, if I'm honest."Dotty called Roy out from the back, wiping his hands on his apron, confused at being summoned. "Everything all right?" Roy asked."Sit down, Roy," Walt said. "Please. This is going to take a few minutes, and I owe you the courtesy of saying it properly."Roy sat, uneasy, glancing between the three of them.Walt took a long breath—the kind a person takes before stepping into cold water. "Thirty years ago," he said, "there was a young construction worker on a project downtown. A good man, honest, careful with his work. His name was Otis Marsh."Roy went very still. "That was my father's name," he said quietly."I know," Walt said. "I've known who you were for a long time, Roy. I just never found the nerve to say any of this to your face."Roy's eyes had gone distant, somewhere back in memory. "I remember him coming home that week," Roy said slowly. "I was maybe eleven. He didn't say much, just sat at the kitchen table a long time, not eating. My mother kept asking what was wrong, and he just kept saying, 'They think I took it. They think I'm a thief.' Kept saying it like he couldn't believe the words himself."The diner was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator in the back."Your father worked alongside a young man named Marcus Whitfield," Walt continued. "Marcus was desperate that year. His own father had just died, left him drowning in debt. He started skimming money off the job, falsifying receipts for materials, pocketing the difference little by little.""That's not what people said happened," Roy said, his voice tight. "People said my father was the thief. Said he got caught stealing supplies and got fired for it. Said it right up until the day he died. Still saying it behind his back at his own funeral.""I know," Walt said, and his voice cracked slightly on the words. "Because Marcus let your father take the blame. Circumstantial evidence pointed at Otis just enough to make it stick, and Marcus never said a word to correct it.""How do you know all this?" Roy asked, his hands gripping the edge of the table."Because Gus Carter caught Marcus," Walt said. "Found real evidence, solid enough to end his career before it started. And Gus, being the man he was, gave him a chance instead of an arrest: sat him down, told him the truth could ruin him or the truth could change him, and made him promise to make things right on his own.""Did he?" Roy asked. "Did he ever make it right?"