“Ethan, there’s a couple here to see you. Tom and Linda Harris.”
For a moment, the numbers on the screen blurred.
I told her to send them in.
They walked into my office slowly—Tom still carrying himself with that same rigid authority, and Linda looking small, almost frightened, her eyes darting around the polished room like it might judge her.
She started crying the moment she saw me.
“Ethan,” she whispered, wiping her cheeks. “We… we came because we need your help.”
Tom said nothing. Just stood beside her, stiff and silent, like a man who’d run out of excuses years ago.
I leaned back in my chair, the calmness in my voice held together by twenty-one years of scar tissue.
“Well,” I said quietly, “this should be interesting.”
They told me everything over lukewarm coffee in the conference room. Tom had been laid off from his factory job five years ago. Their home was foreclosed last year. Medical bills piled up after he suffered a stroke. They were drowning in debt, with nowhere to go.
Linda clasped her hands, voice trembling. “We thought you might… help us start over.”
