Chapter 317: The File II

"Then I’ll frame it accordingly," said Eleanor. "Three days."

She ended the call.

Sean sat at his desk.

He opened his laptop again.

He read the rest of the outline.

The Richard section was the longest.

It documented Richard Miller’s professional history with the specific detail of someone who had found every available record. His education. His entry into the family company. The years working under Henry’s direct supervision. The arrangement of the Harrington marriage. A timeline of his relationship with Catherine Walsh that Eleanor had found through secondary sources, building permit records, site visit logs, the kind of paper trail that detailed interactions leave behind even when nobody is paying attention.

Eight months in the record. Then nothing. No further contact after a specific date in 1990.

Seven months after that date: Sean Miller born. Catherine Walsh-Miller listed as sole parent on the birth certificate.

Richard’s marriage to Diane Harrington. Six months after Sean’s birth. The timing documented without comment.

At the bottom of the Richard section Eleanor had written one note.

Richard Miller has made one significant charitable contribution in the last five years. One hundred thousand dollars to a sickle cell research foundation in 2023. Anonymous. I found it through foundation records. There is no obvious personal connection to sickle cell disease in his family history. The donation predates any knowledge of your involvement with the Osei fund by approximately fourteen months.

Sean read that three times.

He didn’t know what to do with it.

He closed the laptop.

His phone buzzed.

Sophie again.

I know I said I’d hold the other nine. I lied. Can I ask one more.

He looked at the message.

Then at the closed laptop.

Then back at his phone.

Yes, he typed.

Did you know about us, she said. Before he called. Did you know he existed.

Sean thought about the honest answer.

No, he typed. I knew there was a father somewhere. I didn’t have a name or a face. Your mother didn’t.

A long pause from Sophie’s end. Long enough that Sean could feel her sitting with it.

I didn’t know about you either, she said finally. Not until three weeks ago when the Google alert came up. Another pause. It’s a strange thing to find out. I had a whole idea of what my family was. And then it just. Got bigger.

Yes, said Sean. It did.

Is that okay, she said. For you. That it got bigger.

Sean looked at the window.

He thought about the file. About James Walsh and sixty-one percent of a pension. About Catherine at twelve. About Henry Miller’s legal team and a technical argument that held up in court and what it had cost.

He thought about a hundred thousand dollars to a sickle cell foundation, anonymous, with no obvious personal connection.

He thought about Sophie saying it’s a strange thing to find out.

I don’t know yet, he typed. I’ll tell you when I do.

That’s honest, she said.

I try to be, he said.

Dad says that about himself too, she said. He says he tries to be honest. I think he is. I also think he’s been honest about some things approximately thirty years too late which is its own kind of problem.

Yes, said Sean. It is.

But he’s trying now, she said. For what it’s worth. He’s been different since he called you. Quieter but in a good way. Like he put something down. A pause. I thought you should know that.

Sean held his phone.

’That’s what Sophie said someone’s face looked like when they made a decision,’ he thought. ’At the corner café in Paris when Vanessa said Makima built something real.’

No. That was something else.

That was what someone looked like when they’d been carrying something for a long time and had just set it down.

Thank you, he typed. For telling me that.

I have seven more questions, she said. But I’ll hold them now. Actually hold them.

I’ll be in touch, he said. About meeting.

A pause. Then just three words from Sophie.

Okay. No rush.

He put his phone down.

He sat at his desk with the Saturday morning around him and the closed laptop and Eleanor Vance’s forty-eight hour outline already in his head.

He thought about whether he was ready to meet Richard Miller.

He thought about what ready meant in a situation that had no established template.

He thought about Catherine.

He thought about what she would have said about a hundred thousand dollars to a sickle cell foundation with no personal connection.

She would have said something short. Something accurate. The way she always said things that mattered.

He thought he knew what it would have been.

It doesn’t make it even, she would have said. But it tells you something about who he became.

He opened his laptop.

He typed a reply to Eleanor Vance’s email.

Full picture. Three days. Thank you.

He closed the laptop.

He made more coffee.

Outside the campus was doing its Saturday things, unhurried and indifferent to the specific weight of what had arrived in his inbox at seven nineteen in the morning and what it was going to require him to decide.

He let the Saturday be what it was.

He drank his coffee.

He waited for whatever came next.

—----------

He planned it on Sunday.

Not in response to the file specifically. The file was still being processed in the background of everything and would continue to be processed until Eleanor sent the full picture. Planning the weekend was something separate. Something he’d been meaning to do for a while and had kept finding reasons to postpone.

He stopped finding reasons.

He texted James at nine AM.

I need a private property for next weekend. Thursday evening through Monday morning. Large enough for four people comfortably. Something with a kitchen that actually works and enough space that four people aren’t on top of each other. Within two hours of the city.