Richard had tolerated it for years because Isaiah’s other deals more than compensated.
But after the Thompson deal closed for twelve million dollars, Richard walked into Isaiah’s office after the board meeting, shut the door, and finally said what the whole executive team had been circling around.
‘How long are you going to keep doing this to yourself?’
Isaiah did not look up from the acquisition packet in front of him.
‘Doing what?’
‘Pretending those properties are just properties.’
Richard had known him for eleven years, long enough to understand when a conversation mattered more because Isaiah wanted it to end.
He moved closer to the desk and lowered his voice.
‘It’s about the girl again.’
Isaiah’s jaw hardened.
‘Five years, three investigators, and half a fortune chasing a name,’ Richard said.
‘Maybe she moved on.
Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.’
That last sentence landed badly.
Isaiah looked up then, and the emptiness in his face unsettled even Richard.
‘Don’t decide what she wants for her,’ he said.
Richard exhaled and backed off, but the damage was done.
Once the room emptied, Isaiah pulled open the drawer, looked at the ribbon, and realized
something that expensive professionals had somehow obscured with reports and data pulls and public-record searches.
He had been looking for Victoria like an executive.
He needed to look for her like a boy.
That afternoon, instead of attending a dinner with prospective partners, Isaiah drove to Lincoln Elementary himself.
The building was shuttered now, one of the many underused properties caught between policy failures and redevelopment proposals.
A temporary fence wrapped the lot.
Paint peeled from window frames.
Weeds had forced themselves up through cracked asphalt.
The place looked smaller than his memory and sadder than he had expected.
He stood for a long minute beside the old perimeter, hearing ghost-noise in the wind: children shouting, lunch bells, shoes on concrete.
A voice behind him said, ‘You waiting for someone, son?’
Isaiah turned.
An older man in a maintenance jacket was carrying a ring of keys and a paper sack of tools.
His beard was white, his shoulders still broad, his eyes sharp in the particular way of men who had spent years keeping buildings functional after everyone else gave up on them.
The name patch on the jacket read Barnes.
Isaiah introduced himself and, feeling foolish all at once, asked whether he had ever known a girl named Victoria Hayes who attended the school years ago.
Mr.
Barnes stared at him for a moment, then at the fence, then back at Isaiah.
‘The little girl with the red ribbons?’ he asked.
Isaiah forgot how to breathe.
