The kind of pause a man used when he was about to say something he'd been holding back because he hadn't been sure of it yet. And now he was. There are cases like this, Reyes said slowly, that end up being about one lender's practice in one state. And there are cases that end up being about industrywide practices that regulators have been looking for a thread to pull for years. He paused again.
I've been in contact with someone at the Arizona Attorney General's office. Not formally, just a conversation, but they're aware of what we're building. Ethan stood very still. Since when? He asked.
Since yesterday afternoon, Rehea said after the injunction filing. When you put something into the public record that has this kind of statutory specificity, certain officers pay attention. Ethan looked at Pharaoh sitting at his kitchen table, turning the payment history over in his hands again, waiting. What does that mean for the people in the case? Ethan asked.
It means, Rehea said carefully, that if the AG's office decides to move on this independently, it significantly increases the pressure on Apex to settle the individual cases quickly and completely on terms favorable to the plaintiffs. It could actually speed up your resolution, not slow it down. He paused. But it also means it stops being something Ethan Carter controls. Ethan absorbed that.
He thought about the thing he told Campos, about not wanting to be a story, about the specific discomfort of visibility, about having spent his whole life doing right things quietly and having that be enough. What does Darla say? He asked. She says it depends on you, Ria said. If you want to keep this narrowly defined your case, the name plaintiffs the six properties she can build it that way and it still wins.
If you're willing to let it be what it might actually be, she needs to know that before Monday. Pharaoh looked up from his payment history and met Ethan's eyes across the kitchen. He didn't know what Reyes had just said, but something in Ethan's expression must have communicated the weight of it because Pharaoh set the paper down again and straightened slightly in his chair. What's happening? Pharaoh asked quietly.
Ethan looked at this man he'd known for less than 2 hours. 66 years old, 31 years working for the state, a wife named Connie, who still worked part-time because the pension didn't quite cover everything. 8 months of doing the math himself and being made to doubt his own arithmetic. Something bigger than I expected, Ethan said. He asked Reyes to hold.
He put the phone face down on the table and looked at Pharaoh. He told him plainly without inflating it what Reyes had said about the AD's office, what it might mean for the case, what it might mean for the people in it. Pharaoh listened without moving. When Ethan finished, Pharaoh was quiet for a moment. My father lost his property in the 70s, Pharaoh said.
Bad loan, predatory terms. He spent the rest of his life believing he'd made the mistake. He paused. He hadn't, but he died believing it. Ethan didn't say anything.
Let it be what it is, Pharaoh said. Ethan picked up the phone. Tell Darla to build it the right way, he said to Reyes. After Pharaoh left, they shook hands on the porch. The kind of handshake that meant something beyond the social convention of it.
Ethan went back inside and called Jackson. He told him everything. The injunction campos in the courtroom craze call and how he'd handled it. Pharaoh showing up at the house, the conversation with Reyes about the AG's office. Jackson listened to all of it.
Then he said, "You know what this means?" "It means it got bigger," Ethan said. "It means," Jackson said, "that there is no version of this that stays quiet. Not anymore." He paused.
"How do you feel about that?" Ethan thought about it honestly, the way Margaret always required. 2 days ago, I would have said, "I didn't want it," he said. "I still don't want the attention part. I never wanted that."
He stopped. But there's a man named Gerald Shu who's 78 years old and he had an active foreclosure 3 days ago and now he doesn't and there are more people like him. And if making this big is what stops the next one from happening to someone else who doesn't have a Reyes or a campus to call, he paused. Then I can live with being visible. Jackson was quiet on the line.
You know what I keep thinking about? Jackson said finally. What? I keep thinking about the fact that it started with you finding something that wasn't yours. Jackson said, "And deciding that mattered, that the distinction between yours and not yours mattered even when it cost you to maintain it," he paused.
"And that same instinct, the one that made you pick up that wallet and find a way to return it instead of just keeping it, that's the same instinct that's driving everything that's happening now." Ethan didn't answer right away. He thought about the 10 seconds on the highway shoulder, the photograph of Lily, the 30 seconds it had taken him to make the decision. I just did what seemed right, Ethan said. I know, Jackson said.
That's the whole point. He let that sit between them for a moment. Then Jackson said in the flat practical register that meant he was about to shift to logistics. I'm going to make sure you're not doing this alone. The people who showed up at your house to fix the roof there available, not for the legal work, but for whatever else needs doing.
Running people somewhere. Making sure nobody's bothering you in ways they shouldn't. He paused. You're not going to want to hear this. Say it anyway.
Ethan said Apex has resources and they have reach and they don't like losing. Jackson said what Campos told you about them trying to change the story. She was being polite about it. They will push and they will push in ways that a 72year-old man living alone in a desert town without much support isn't necessarily set up to handle. Ethan sat with that.
I'm not afraid of them. He said, "I know you're not," Jackson said. "I'm not asking you to be afraid. I'm telling you that you have backup whether you asked for it or not." The word backup landed in Ethan's chest in a way he hadn't expected.
Not because it was complicated, because it was simple, and because the simple truth of it, that there were people prepared to stand behind him, was something he hadn't had outside of Margaret in longer than he could accurately remember. "All right," he said. Get some sleep, Jackson said. Darla's going to call you in the morning to go over what the complaint looks like. I will, Ethan said.
He didn't immediately. He sat at the table in the kitchen that had become something over the last 4 days. Not just his kitchen, but the place where something had started. He sat there and he thought about all of it. The chain of it link by link from the wallet lying in the dust by an abandoned gas station all the way to an attorney in Phoenix building a complaint that might reach the Arizona Attorney General's office.