CHAPTER 170: Edward

POV: Avalon Pierce

He knew the name from a photograph.

Nene's desk. It was a black and white photograph in a small silver frame that had sat in the same spot for as long as he could remember. Two men standing outside a building, young, suits that said the sixties clearly, one of them his grandfather Richard Pierce, the other one—

"Edward Pierce," he said.

"Yes," Margaret said. "Do you know him?"

"The photograph," he said to  Selene. "On Nene's desk. The one I always thought was just a family photograph."

"I remember it," Selene said. "The one with two men outside a building."

"The other man was Edward Pierce," he said. "Richard's brother and Nene's brother-in-law." He looked at the wall. "He was at every family gathering until I was about six or seven. Then he just—wasn't."

"What happened to him?" Selene asked.

"Nobody ever said," he said. "I stopped asking eventually. The way children stop asking about things that adults don't answer."

"He's eighty-one years old," Margaret said through the phone. "Living in Marin has been since 1982."

"1982," Avalon said. "Four years after the displacement bonds."

"Yes," Margaret said.

"Nene knew," he said. 

"Almost certainly," Margaret said.

"She knew her brother-in-law helped design the scheme that displaced those families," he said. "And she said nothing?"

"She built the foundation's predecessor instead," Margaret said. "The question in her board notes. The money that was set aside twelve years ago. The will that brought Selene back." A pause. "I think she spent forty years trying to answer for something she felt responsible for by proximity."

Avalon sat down.

Selene came and sat beside him.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"What does the prosecutor want?" Selene asked Margaret.

"They want Avalon to come in tomorrow," Margaret said. "Edward Pierce has agreed to cooperate. He's eighty-one and apparently has been waiting for someone to ask him about 1978 for decades. He wants to give a full account."

"He wants to confess," Avalon said.

"He wants to be done carrying it," Margaret said. "Those were apparently his exact words to the prosecutor. ‘I've been carrying this since 1978, and I'm eighty-one years old, and I'm done."

After Margaret hung up, the apartment was very quiet.

Selene sat beside him.

"The photograph," she said.

"I looked at it every day when I was a child," he said. "I used to ask Nene who the other man was. She always said old family. That's all. Old family."

"She was protecting him," Selene said.

"Or herself," he said. "From having to explain that the family she'd built everything around had helped cause what she spent forty years trying to fix."

"Both probably," Selene said.

"She asked what we were actually building toward," he said. "And the answer goes back further than I thought. It's not just Pierce Holdings drifting from its values. It started to break. The foundation was broken in 1978."

"And she spent forty years knowing that," Selene said.

"Yes," he said.

"And still built the question," she said. "Still set aside the money. Still wrote the will." She came and stood beside him. "Knowing where it came from makes the building more significant. Not less."

He looked at her.

"How?" he asked.

"Because she didn't look away," Selene said. "She couldn't fix 1978. She couldn't undo Edward. She couldn't give those families their homes back. But she asked the question anyway. She started the answer anyway." She paused. "That's not complicated. That's someone doing what they can with what they have in the time they're given."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"I need to meet him," he said. "Before the prosecutor's office or any of it becomes official, documented and legal." He looked at her. "I need to look at him and ask him what happened in 1978."

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Before we go to Kim's office,” he replied.

"I'm coming," she said.

"You're on modified bed rest," he said.

"I'm coming," she said again. The voice that wasn't asking.

He looked at her.

"Okay," he said.

He called the prosecutor's office and got Edward Pierce's address from Kim after a conversation that took longer than it should have because Kim had concerns about uncontrolled contact with a cooperating witness.

Avalon said, "He's my family, and  I'm going to talk to him. You can make that official, or I can do it privately. Either way, I'm going."

Kim said, "9 AM. I'll have someone present."

"Fine," Avalon said.

He didn't sleep.

He sat in the nursery.

He thought about being six years old and asking who the other man was.

Old family, Nene had said.

He thought about what an old family meant to a woman who spent forty years building an answer to a question she'd inherited from people who had caused the problem.

He thought about Edward Pierce at eighty-one, saying I've been carrying this since 1978, and I'm done.

He understood the weight of something carried too long.

At six AM, Selene appeared in the nursery doorway.

"You didn't sleep," she said.

"No," he said.

"Come to bed for an hour," she said.

"I won't sleep," he said.

"I know," she said. "Come anyway."

He got up and followed her anyway.

She took his hand.

"Whatever he says today," she said. "Whatever 1978 was. It doesn't change what we're building."

"I know," he said.

They were in the car at eight thirty.

Marin crossed the bridge.

The bay below them, catching the morning light the way it did when the city was trying its best.

Selene looked at the water.

"Are you scared?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Of what specifically?" she asked.

"That he's going to tell me something that makes everything we've built feel smaller than I thought," he said. "That the foundation's answer to a question is less than what the question deserved."

"Nothing he says changes what…”

"I know," he said.

The house in Marin was small.

Not what he'd expected. Not the house of someone who had profited from a scheme that had displaced hundreds of families. Just a small house with a garden that had been tended carefully for a long time.

An old man opened the door before they knocked.

Eighty-one years old.

The face from the photograph is aged forty years, but recognisable.

Edward Pierce looked at Avalon for a long moment.

"You look like Richard around the eyes." He said.

"I've been told," Avalon said.

Edward looked at Selene and at her stomach.

Something moved across his face.

"Come in," he said. "I've been waiting a long time for this conversation."

They sat in his living room.

"Tell me about 1978," Avalon said.