Chapter 14 - THE FIRST DAY WITHOUT A CAMERA
The first unsupervised visit lasted four hours.
Public place.
Then Michael's new apartment.
Lauren knew the address.
Ethan had his own phone.
He could leave.
That was months after the school gate.
Michael picked him up in an old Honda.
No camera mounted on the dash.
Ethan noticed.
“Your phone?”
“Glove box.”
“Why?”
“Habit.”
Ethan almost asked which habit.
Didn't.
They got burgers.
Went to a used bookstore.
Then Michael asked:
“Want to see the apartment?”
“Sure.”
Small.
Two bedrooms.
Cheap sofa.
Editing desk with no monitor yet.
Ethan stood in the second room.
Bed.
Desk.
Nothing filmed.
Michael leaned against the doorframe.
“I didn't decorate.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“You'd make it look like a sad divorced-dad room.”
Michael laughed.
Then stopped because Ethan wasn't joking.
“Right.”
They sat in the living room.
Silence.
It felt terrible.
Then normal.
Michael said:
“I don't know how to do this without documenting it.”
Ethan looked at him.
“Then be bad at it.”
Michael nodded.
Fair.
He told Ethan he had started contract editing for a local construction company.
Not glamorous.
Steady.
He was also paying the sponsor debt in installments.
No secret comeback channel.
No rebrand.
Ethan asked:
“Do you miss it?”
“The money?”
“The attention.”
Michael took time.
“Yes.”
Good.
“I miss people telling me I was a good father.”
Ethan looked at him.
“That was kind of the problem.”
“Yes.”
Michael stared at the floor.
“When your mom died, strangers told me I was inspiring.”
He laughed faintly.
“I was barely getting you to school.”
“Sometimes you didn't.”
“I know.”
“And then?”
“Then if I posted us surviving something, people told me I was strong.”
Ethan understood too much of that for twelve.
So he did not try to fix his father.
“Therapist?”
Michael nodded.
“Therapist.”
Better.
At the end of the visit, Michael drove him back.
No tears.
No hug requirement.
Ethan chose a quick one before getting out.
Lauren watched from the porch.
Michael drove away.
That should have been the chapter ending.
It wasn't.
Melissa called later.
She had received the final archive from the old Carter Family Strong cloud account.
Most files were known.
Then one folder appeared.
Created by David Carter before he removed himself as administrator.
DO NOT DELETE — R.C. REQUEST
Rebecca Carter.
Inside:
Financial exports.
Draft child-revenue agreement.
Brooke's emails.
And a spreadsheet titled:
External Licensing
Melissa opened it.
Eleven rows.
Clips licensed to documentary producers, news segments, parenting sites.
Normal enough.
Then one row dated four months after Rebecca died.
Buyer:
BrightNest Media Group
Clip package:
Rebecca illness / Ethan grief / private home footage
Payment:
$18,000.
Michael had never reported it.
Melissa asked him.
He sounded confused.
“I didn't sell that.”
“Your LLC received the money.”
“No.”
They traced it.
Not his LLC.
An older account.
Carter Family Strong Partnership.
An entity Michael believed had been closed when Rebecca died.
Authorized signature on the licensing contract:
D. Carter
David.
Ethan's grandfather.
The man who had told Michael he was crossing Rebecca's line had sold grief footage himself.
Then transferred most of the money somewhere else.
Where?
An account labeled:
R.C. Legacy Reserve
Nobody in the current family records knew what that was.
David had died before Rebecca's estate accounting was fully reconstructed.
The account had later been closed.
The receiving bank would require proper estate process.
Melissa told Lauren:
“This doesn't change what Michael did.”
Good.
It didn't.
“But it means Rebecca's father-in-law may have been handling her footage after her death in a way nobody disclosed.”
Ethan overheard enough to ask:
“Grandpa sold Mom too?”
Lauren looked at him.
May you like
“I don't know yet.”
For once, she did not say no just because no would feel kinder.
