Ethan said they may say no and then come back. She said. Or they may not. I want you to understand that. I understand, Ethan said.
Talk to the other plaintiffs. Tell them what the NDA offer is. Tell them I'm rejecting the NDA condition, but that it's their choice individually. He stopped. This started because I made a decision about what belonged to me and what didn't.
Gerald Shu and Dennis Pharaoh and Raymond Aaphor, they get to make that decision for themselves. I'm not going to make it for them. Another silence longer than the previous ones. "All right," Campo said. "I'll make the calls."
He got up and made coffee and stood at the kitchen counter while the coffee brewed and thought about whether he just made the right call or the stubborn one and whether in this particular situation there was a difference. His phone buzzed, a text from a number he didn't recognize. He almost ignored it. Then he read it. "Mr. Carter, my name is Gerald Shu.
Darla just called me. I wanted to hear your voice before I decided anything. Can you call me Ethan? Called him immediately. Gerald Shu's voice was older than Ethan expected.
Not in a diminished way, but in the way of a man who had accumulated a great deal of life and was carrying most of it with him at any given moment. He spoke carefully, choosing his words. "She told me about the NDA," Gerald said. "Yes," Ethan said. "She told me what you said that it was our choice individually."
It is, Ethan said. Gerald was quiet for a moment. I'm 78, he said. I don't have a lot of runway left for principles that take years to pay out. I know, Ethan said.
But I've been on that property for 31 years, Gerald said. I built a workshop back behind the house. My son and I built it the summer before he moved to Oregon. He's in Oregon still doing fine. He paused.
I don't need that property for the money it represents. I need it because it's the last place where all the things that matter to me are still in one location. Ethan didn't say anything, he understood. If we sign the NDA, Gerald said, and they do this to someone else somewhere else, someone else like me, someone who built something over 30 years and had it threatened by people who bet they were too old or too isolated to fight back. He stopped.
I don't want to be the reason that it keeps happening. Ethan felt something move through his chest, quiet and certain. You don't have to decide anything right now. Ethan said, "I already decided," Gerald said. "I called you because I wanted to say it to the person who started this, not to Darla.
To you." He paused. No NDA. After he hung up, Ethan sat at the table with his coffee and thought that the world was full of Gerald Hus and Dennis Pharaohs and Raymond Alkaors and that most of them were invisible to the systems that made decisions about their lives and that invisibility was precisely what those systems relied on. Campus called back at 11:40 seven no ND as she said two who want to take the full settlement including the NDA.
That's their right, Ethan said. Yes, she said. I'm presenting Apex with the split seven plaintiffs. Reject the NDA condition two, except the full settlement. What we're offering is corrected mortgage amounts and overcharge reimbursement for all nine NDA for two, no NDA for seven.
She paused. Apex is going to call this unprecedented. Is it? Ethan said. In my experience, she said yes.
Do it anyway. Ethan said she did. Apex response came back in two hours and 40 minutes which was faster than Ethan expected which meant something about the pressure they were feeling. The response was a counter they would accept the split ND a structure for a reduced settlement figure. They were cutting the overcharge reimbursement by 20%.
Ethan read the counter when Campos forwarded it. He called her back. Tell them no. He said full overcharge reimbursement or we go to Thursday. They're testing you.
She said I know. He said, "Tell them no." He was standing at the kitchen counter, waiting for Campos to call back when a knock came at the front door. He opened it. It was Decker.
He was holding two brown paper bags that smelled like food, and he had the expression of a man who had been given an assignment and was executing it without drama. "Jackson figured you hadn't eaten," Decker said. Ethan looked at him for a moment. "Come in," he said. Decker had brought enough food for four people, which was either a miscalculation or a statement.
He spread it on the kitchen table while Ethan cleared space, and they ate two men who had known each other for less than 2 weeks, and talked in the practical, unmbellished way of men who communicated best through the act of doing rather than the act of declaring. Decker told him about the roof repair, about what had needed replacing, and what had been salvageable, and the specific type of seal he'd used for the Arizona sun exposure, and why. Ethan told him about the counter from Apex Decker ate for a moment. What happens if they don't come back before Thursday? We go in front of the judge Thursday, Ethan said.
Is that bad for them? Ethan said. Decker nodded once. Then they'll come back. Campos called at 3:18.
They accepted, she said. Ethan set his coffee down. All terms full reimbursement split NDA. Full reimbursement split NDA and home. She paused and the pause had something in it.
Ethan hadn't heard from her before. A quality that was almost like satisfaction, but more controlled than that. They've agreed to a compliance audit of their full Arizona modification portfolio conducted by an independent firm with results filed in the public record. Ethan was completely still. The audit was your idea?