Chapter 2 - WALTER BENNETT
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Then Richard found his voice.
“Walter.”
Not Mr. Bennett.
Not sir.
Walter.
The old man looked at him.
Richard's posture changed.
The arrogance did not disappear.
It rearranged itself around fear.
“I didn't know you were coming.”
“That was intentional.”
Walter looked toward Ethan's cracked badge.
Then at Richard.
“You fired him?”
Richard glanced toward the employees watching.
“I removed a junior employee for insubordination.”
The female attorney spoke.
“No, you didn't.”
Richard turned.
“Dana.”
Dana Mercer was outside counsel to the Bennett family trust and a former federal prosecutor who did not seem impressed by expensive ties.
“You do not have unilateral termination authority over non-direct-report staff.”
Richard's jaw tightened.
“I can recommend immediate separation.”
“You can.”
She held out her hand toward Ethan.
“Mr. Parker, your employment status has not changed.”
Ethan stared at her.
Then at Walter.
“I don't understand what's happening.”
“That makes two of us.”
Walter said it quietly.
Richard looked at him.
“Walter, if this is about the conduct review—”
“It isn't.”
That made Richard more nervous.
Walter turned toward the lobby security director.
“No one deletes video from the last thirty minutes.”
The director nodded immediately.
Walter added:
“And nobody treats Mr. Hayes as guilty of anything because I disliked what I saw.”
Richard's eyes narrowed.
That surprised Ethan.
Walter continued:
“Preserve it. HR can decide what it means.”
Then he looked at Ethan again.
“Will you come upstairs?”
Ethan almost said yes automatically.
Then stopped.
“Why?”
Walter's expression changed.
Good question.
“I need to show you something.”
“You just called me your heir.”
“Yes.”
“In front of everybody.”
Walter looked around the lobby.
Employees were pretending not to listen.
They were terrible at it.
“That was my mistake.”
Richard stared at him.
Ethan did too.
Walter did not pretend the theatrical line had been harmless.
He turned to Dana.
“Private conference room.”
Dana nodded.
Ethan remained where he was.
“I don't know you.”
Walter looked at him for a long moment.
“No.”
“You knew my name?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Walter glanced at the leather case.
“Three weeks ago my estate counsel found a death notice while verifying an old beneficiary record.”
Ethan's face tightened.
“Whose?”
Walter hesitated.
Then:
“Anna Parker.”
Ethan stopped breathing normally.
“My mother.”
Walter's eyes closed for one second.
There.
Not performance.
Pain.
“What was her middle name?”
Ethan asked.
Walter opened his eyes.
“Elizabeth.”
Ethan stared.
“How do you know that?”
Walter answered:
“Because I named her.”
The lobby felt suddenly too bright.
Ethan laughed once.
It came out wrong.
“My mother's father died before I was born.”
Walter's face tightened.
“She told you that?”
“She told me he was dead to her.”
That hit.
Walter accepted it.
Ethan's mother had rarely spoken about her family.
When she did, the sentences were short.
Boston.
Money.
A father who chose his company.
Never go looking.
Ethan looked at Walter Bennett, founder of the firm whose name still occupied half the lobby wall.
Then the old man's surname connected to a memory.
His mother throwing away an annual report when Ethan was eleven.
His father saying:
“Anna, it's just paper.”
Her answer:
“Not in this house.”
Ethan looked at Walter.
“You're saying you're my grandfather.”
Walter did not reach for him.
Good.
He said:
“I'm saying I have reason to believe Anna Bennett Parker was your mother.”
“She was.”
“And that means I may have spent twenty-one years not knowing my grandson existed.”
Ethan stared.
Richard had gone very still.
Then Richard spoke.
“Anna Bennett?”
Walter looked at him.
Richard's face had changed again.
Not because of Walter.
Because of Ethan.
“Parker.”
he whispered.
Ethan turned.
Richard looked at him as if his last name had suddenly become something dangerous.
Walter noticed.
“So you recognize it.”
Richard answered too slowly.
“My father knew a Daniel Parker.”
Ethan's stomach dropped.
“My dad.”
Nobody moved.
May you like
Richard Hayes had just connected Ethan's parents to something old inside this firm.
And judging by his face, it was not a happy memory.
