Chapter 17: Cal's Choice

Cal went to the site on Monday anyway.

I went with him, because the school could wait one morning and Cal could not.

"You don't have to," he said on the 7 train.

"I know."

"You're going to stand there and look at everyone like you're about to cry."

"I'm not going to cry."

"You cry at commercials, Lena."

"That was one commercial."

He grinned, and the grin held until we came up the stairs at Hudson Yards and saw the steel frame of the hotel against the sky.

Forty ironworkers stood in the lot in hard hats, drinking coffee from paper cups.

The site manager was waiting by the gate with a man in a gray suit and a folder.

"Boyle," the site manager said. "This is from the owner's office."

The man in the gray suit opened the folder.

"Mr. Boyle, there has been a misunderstanding about a records room," he said. "Mr. Thornquist is willing to put it behind us."

He slid a pen across the folder.

"You sign a statement that you took a book you had no right to take. You return any copies. Your position here continues, with a bonus."

"And if I don't sign?"

"Then your employment ends today, and the company will file a complaint."

Cal took the paper and read it carefully, all the way to the bottom.

I watched his lips move on the long words.

He was the one who never said what he felt, and I was sure he would sign it.

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