Part 4
The restitution took eight months.
His lawyer called it unprecedented.
His board called it madness.
He called it overdue.
Company by company.
Decision by decision.
He went back through seven years of choices.
Found the ones that had caused damage.
And fixed them.
Not all of them could be fixed.
Some damage was permanent.
Some people had moved on.
Some hadn’t survived to move on.
But where he could — he did.
The girl watched him do it.
From her new bedroom in his apartment.
Which he had furnished carefully.
Based on what she told him she liked.
Which wasn’t much.
Because she wasn’t used to being asked.
On the day the final restitution was processed.
He came home to find her at the kitchen table.
With the notebook.
Reading her mother’s words.
He sat across from her.
“I finished,” he said.
She looked up.
“Everything?” she said.
“Everything I could,” he said.
She looked at the notebook.
“She would have said that’s not enough,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“She would have been right,” she said.
“I know that too,” he said.
The girl looked at him.
At the man who had spent eight months trying to undo seven years.
“But?” she said.
He looked at her.
At his daughter.
At the face that was her mother’s face.
And — he could see it now — his own.
“But it’s a start,” he said.
She looked at the notebook.
At her mother’s last words.
Our daughter deserves better than indifference.
She closed it.
Set it on the table between them.
“She was right,” the girl said.
“About what?” he said.
The girl looked at him.
