Chapter 8 - The Work He Hid
Jonah asked to speak without an audience, so I took him to the empty rehearsal room beside the shuttered theater. Dust floated through an afternoon beam of sunlight. He stayed standing while I sat.
“Seven winters ago, the landlord refused to replace the feeder,” he said. “It kept overheating. We had tenants with space heaters because the boiler had failed. I made a temporary splice to keep the apartments from going dark.”
“Was it inspected?”
“No.”
“Then why didn't you tell anyone?”
“I wrote the owner a letter. He changed managers. Then your people bought the building, and I was told the whole wing would be vacated. I figured the system would be torn out before it hurt anybody.”
He looked suddenly older than he had at my car window. “I told myself I was choosing between a dangerous repair and people freezing that night. I stopped asking what happened after that night.”
I felt anger rise, then discomfort. His excuse sounded painfully similar to mine: someone else would handle the consequence.
“Did you falsify anything?”
“I wrote 'temporary' in my notebook. On Russell's invoice it says 'permanent repair.' I didn't approve that description.”
“If the city learns about an unpermitted splice—”
“They should. They should've learned years ago. I was scared Marisol and the others would lose their homes. That's no excuse for letting them think the wiring was sound.”
We walked to Priya's temporary office together. Jonah described the work, marked its location on a diagram, and gave her permission to inspect his old logs. She didn't reassure him that he'd be protected. She said she would document his disclosure accurately.
At the hotel, Jonah told Marisol before rumors could. She had trusted him with her spare key for nine years.
“Were we safe?” she asked.
“I thought you were safer with lights than without them. I was wrong to stop there.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “I can understand what you feared. I don't know if I can forgive you yet.”
May you like
Jonah nodded. He did not ask again.
That evening Priya found the splice. It wasn't the cause of the power outage, but the insulation around it had deteriorated. The fire-risk finding made a lengthy closure nearly certain. She sent me her written recommendation just as a second message appeared, from Celia: THE BOARD WILL VOTE AT NINE. COME PREPARED TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF.
