Two Years Later
Chapter 15 - Two Years Later
Two years after that terrible morning at the Meridian Tower site, Nathan stood at a groundbreaking ceremony for Reeves Construction's newest project, the company's safety record now considerably stronger than any point in its history, a specific, deliberate transformation he'd overseen personally alongside Frank's steady, expert guidance.
"I never expected to end up running this company," he told the assembled crowd, departing slightly from his prepared remarks. "I never even knew it existed, or that I had any connection to it, until the day a scaffold that was supposed to kill me collapsed instead just missing my closest friend."
Frank, standing nearby, nodded with the specific, quiet pride of a man who had watched this entire transformation unfold from its very beginning.
Sarah, now Nathan's wife of six months, stood beside him, considerably more at ease with public gatherings than her previous careful, professional reserve had once allowed.
Gary Finch, having served his own reduced sentence for his role in the original sabotage, had reached out the previous year, requesting a chance to make some kind of amends, an offer Nathan had considered carefully before ultimately allowing him a supervised return to entry-level work, a specific, deliberate second chance built on considerable ongoing oversight.
"I don't think everyone deserves a second chance," Nathan told Sarah, the evening he'd made that decision. "I think Gary's specific situation, coerced by someone he genuinely feared losing his job to defy, earns him one. I don't think the same grace extends to Victor."
Victor remained in prison, twenty years still ahead of his sentence, no contact maintained between the brothers beyond the occasional formal legal correspondence still required by the ongoing restitution proceedings related to the company's safety violations under his leadership.
"Do you ever think about him," Sarah asked, watching the groundbreaking ceremony's small crowd disperse.
"Sometimes," Nathan admitted. "Less often than I expected to, honestly. I think about the version of him our father described in that sealed letter, the version who might have actually been my brother in some other life. I don't think that version ever really existed outside of Dad's hopeful imagination, though. The real Victor made his choices a long time before I ever entered his life directly."
Diane and Roger attended the ceremony as well, considerably more comfortable now navigating the strange, expanded family Nathan's discovery had ultimately created, proud grandparents-in-waiting given Sarah's recently confirmed pregnancy.
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"Our family's going to have a complicated story to tell someday," Sarah said, resting a hand on her still-flat stomach. "About the twin uncle in prison, and the grandfather who tried to fix a mistake too late to see it through himself."
"I think complicated stories, told honestly, are considerably better than simple ones built on comfortable lies," Nathan said. "That's the version I want to give our child, whatever shape it eventually takes."
