Chapter 13
Instead I said, “I'm finding out that half my life has footnotes.”
He smiled sadly.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Can we talk?”
We went into a small conference room.
Ethan closed the door but didn't sit.
“I should have called you months ago.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because Jason is my brother.”
“That hasn't changed.”
“No.”
He finally sat.
“But what being his brother requires of me has.”
There was no accusation in his voice.
Only disappointment.
He told me something I hadn't known.
Two years earlier, Jason had asked Ethan to sign documents related to a family trust.
The Mitchell family trust held a minority stake in the company.
Ethan refused because one schedule attached to the document described certain pre-incorporation technologies as having been developed solely by Jason.
“I knew that wasn't true,” Ethan said.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I asked Jason about it. He said the lawyers had simplified the language.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
The words sounded painfully familiar.
Ethan rubbed his hands together.
“A month later, he sent new documents without that language. I convinced myself it had been a drafting mistake.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Do you have the original version?”
Ethan nodded.
“I saved everything.”
Within an hour, we had another piece of evidence.
Not a decisive one.
But evidence that questions about ownership had continued much more recently than Jason claimed.
That evening, as Daniel and I prepared to leave, the receptionist stopped me.
“Mrs. Mitchell?”
She handed me an envelope.
“No return address. A courier dropped it off.”
Inside was a single handwritten note.
You are looking in the wrong place.
Below that:
Ask who authorized Meridian Archive 7.
Daniel read it twice.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
“No.”
“Could be nonsense.”
“Yes.”
But something about the phrase bothered me.
Meridian Archive 7.
The next morning, we asked the court-appointed technical examiner to locate the archive.
It existed.
Access restricted.
Authorization history protected by an administrator-level credential.
The examiner finally opened the record at three in the afternoon.
Inside were scanned pages from my old notebooks.
Including pages that had never been published.
I felt strangely calm.
“Who authorized the archive?”
The examiner enlarged the metadata.
A user ID appeared.
Not Jason's.
Not mine.
Not Samuel Whitmore's.
M.BROOKS.
Daniel went very still.
I stared at the screen.
“Madison?”
He shook his head slowly.