Page 37 of Small Sacrifices

When Reid drags himself into the office the next morning, Marisol only looks surprised at his presence for a moment before the interrogation starts. Why is he here? Is everything alright? Does he think he's in trouble with Mr. Wright? Did he ever find out what Everett wanted to talk about?

Between fortifying sips of his way-too-hot ginseng tea, he does his best to answer. Well, except for the question about Everett. On that one, he tries his hand at evasion.

"We talked. I think we're friends now."

The look Marisol throws his way in response is the embodiment of "bitch, please."

She makes a few more attempts at extracting information out of him, but Reid remains steadfast in his silence.

After that, his workday is quite relaxed.

One of the parents has written to ask him if he was the one to "accost" Ms. Greene in front of the hospital on Wednesday.

But since he's not allowed to talk about it, he simply forwards the message to Mr. Wright.

Aside from that, it's all quite relaxed.

Until one of the office printers whirs to life behind them. At first, he doesn't think anything of it. But then it doesn't stop printing until it runs out of paper. Marisol's phone rings at the same time as the printer starts beeping, so Reid goes to feed it.

"It's still printing," Marisol comments when Reid finally gets the paper loaded correctly.

Her eyes widen as she stares at the ever-growing mountain of paper—whatever the person on the other end of the line is saying cannot possibly be good. And indeed, once she politely agreed to their demands and said her goodbyes, she looks at Reid plaintively.

"Mr. Wright wants me to sight all of that for possibly damaging content until Tuesday morning."

Oh no. Reid looks down—how many pages are there already? A hundred? And the printer just keeps going. When Reid leans forward a bit, the little display proclaims to be printing page 132 of 257. Goddamn it. It's almost noon already. How is she supposed to manage that?

"What is all of this?"

Marisol sighs. "A backup of an old work laptop, apparently. Or of a folder on a shared server? I'm not really sure. Point is that other people could gain access to it, and they want to get ahead of it."

An old laptop. Reid remembers what Everett mentioned yesterday about finding pictures. But that's secondary to the pressing issue. This isn't Marisol's responsibility. Last week was about handling the fallout from the scandal; this feels like preparing for an inquiry.

Reid doesn't like the implication, and judging by Marisol's expression, neither does she.

Reviewing 257 pages within the remaining eleven official working hours seems impossible.

Reading through them might take a few hours for someone quick like Reid, but cross-referencing documents and writing up a report takes time.

"Do you want me to help?" Reid asks.

"Could you?" Marisol looks so relieved that for a moment, Reid worries if something is wrong. "I still have so many other documents that he wants me to get through until this evening."

Right. Why ensure employees have a manageable workload when you can just pile on more tasks until they break? Reid notices a printout of an email and decides it's preferable to wading through more complex materials. He offers to tackle the emails.

Regret hits him quickly as he realizes he's now committed to over half of the printouts.

But seeing Marisol's overwhelmed state, struggling to organize the paperwork into neat piles, makes him reluctant to back out.

He lines up his highlighters and sticky notes, and settles in for a long task ahead.

Almost none of it is interesting. There are a few emails that definitely should not have been written on a work computer—Reid physically cringes at some of the pet names Mackenzie used for his wife, and he cringes even more at the explicit messages he wrote to a woman who is definitely not his wife.

Guiltily, he hopes Everett is aware of this affair.

Reid doesn't want to know something about Everett's father that Everett doesn't know. Especially not something like this.

But while sordid and definitely unethical, these emails don't seem to document anything illegal. Reid still makes a note of them, so that no one can say they weren't warned. An affair is not the worst thing that could be exposed in this scenario, but it would still be bad.

It's already been dark out for quite some time when Marisol's phone rings again.

Reid jumps in surprise, but Marisol startles so badly that one of her precarious paper towers cascades down from her desk.

She's still cursing when she picks up the call, the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder while she tries to collect the papers.

But the moment the person on the other side of the line starts talking, she freezes.

"Oh fuck, I'm so sorry. I completely lost track of time." Her voice is higher than normal, and she sounds mad at herself.

Reid looks at his watch. It's not that late, but they should have left for the weekend already. And clearly, Marisol was meant to be somewhere. She's still apologizing when she deposits the gathered paper on her desk and begins to haphazardly stack it.

"I can be there in thirty minutes. I'm so sorry, Monique. We have this new deadline and—" She stops talking. The voice interrupting her on the other end of the line sounds angry.

Right, he can no longer watch this. Marisol's eyes first spark with confusion and then soften with relief when he tries to convey through gestures that she can go, he's going to take care of this. If he's going to leave as well, it won't add much time to tidy up her desk a bit.

She mouths "thank you" before she grabs her bag and flees.

It leaves him in silence, wondering what exactly just happened.

Careful to not cut himself, he puts the printouts on Marisol's desk in neat stacks—on top of them a sticky note telling her he didn't sort them.

Looking back at his own desk, he's a bit discouraged.

Somehow, he'd thought he'd be able to get through the emails.

Sullenly, Reid stuffs the printouts into his satchel. There are no plans for this weekend beyond doing the grocery shopping. He can take his work home with him for once. Only once, though, he reminds himself. This can't become a habit. That way lies trouble.

Of course, Reid should have expected that his sister would check in on him after the week he had.

Briana stops by on Saturday afternoon, once Reid has stored all his fresh produce and made himself a nice lunch.

She just waltzes in and plops herself down on his couch, demanding a full account of his week and specifically the trip to Chesterton.

She doesn't stay for too long. Reid is probably projecting his anxiety for her to leave so he can get to work and have the Sunday for relaxation.

It makes him feel guilty because he is thankful that she's checking up on him.

And she isn't even being pushy. But he feels protective of the information that Everett divulged to him, so his answers are evasive. This Briana seems worried about.

"I just want you to be careful. Don't let him talk you into doing things you don't want to do." She sighs. "You know this could affect your job, right?"

Aaand that's the end of his rope. Yes, he knows. He's not stupid. Why does this always happen? She means well, but sometimes, she ends up being patronizing.

"Yes, I do," he says. To his own ears, his voice sounds calm, but Briana raises her hands in alarm.

"I didn't mean to imply—" She interrupts herself before she can say it out loud, closes her eyes for a second, and tries again. "I just want to make sure you see the big picture."

Reid nods. If his tone was off before, he doesn't want to risk saying anything else. They get like this sometimes, him and Briana, endlessly misunderstanding each other until they get more and more upset.

Right now, Briana does not look happy. "Reid, please. You know how you get sometimes."

Reid does know. He also has strong opinions on her saying it like that.

Not that he can express that without this entire thing devolving into a fight.

Briana isn't appeased by his nod, but she at least seems to recognize what he's doing.

She extends her hand to lay it next to his leg on the couch, for him to accept touch if he wants it.

With a sigh, Reid moves his hand to tangle his fingers with hers.

It's fine. They'll be fine. She just needs to leave him alone now, and then they can try again later.

Thankfully, she does. She smiles at him and plucks on one of his curls because she's not allowed to tousle his hair anymore.

She hugs him when he asks her to, lets him breathe in the subtle flowery scent of her shampoo that she's been using since he was ten.

And then she walks out the door with one last wave and a reminder to call her tomorrow.

It still takes Reid a while to start on the emails.

He makes the mistake of sitting down too far from his satchel and gets stuck for about half an hour.

But he manages to do it eventually when his phone lights up with a call from his mother.

He doesn't answer it, but he gets up to retrieve his work.

Only twenty minutes later, he's doubting his sanity.

Why did he think this would be a good idea to do on a Saturday?

If possible, the emails are even more boring to read today than they were the day before.

Although that might be a blessing, because it means he doesn't have to read what crude words Governor Mackenzie thought it appropriate to send to his lover from his work computer.

There are minutes for meetings, plans for lunch, questions on whether an expensive new fountain pen would count as "office equipment" or if Mackenzie would need to buy it himself. All of it is horrifyingly mundane.

But Reid doesn't want to let Marisol down.

He cuts himself some apple slices to crunch on and he keeps going.

And it gets better, but it also gets significantly worse.

Because Reid finds an email written by someone named Tom.

It takes him a while to realize, because it's sent from what's clearly a private email address, but the sender is probably Thomas Carter, who was up and coming in the company back then and is currently sitting on Agrifarm's board of directors.

Hiya Raymond,

Just sending over the final assessment with the original for reference. Richard’s made all the amendments we asked for.

Considering all the horrors that place has seen, I don't think better results would be believable. But it's good enough, hey? Just don't build a playground on it and we'll be fine.

Regards,

Tom

-sent from my iPhone

Reid feels weightless. Just don't build a playground on it. What is that supposed to mean? With numb fingers, he picks up the next sheet of paper, expecting to see the assessment and whatever nasty surprises it might bring. But it's just another unrelated email.

All of a sudden, it feels like there's a vise clamped around Reid's lungs. Because this… he was right. Governor Mackenzie knew. He was explicitly warned, and he still had an elementary school built on land that was soaked with dangerous chemicals.

Breathing shallowly only makes Reid's thoughts race faster, and he almost wants to laugh. Because on Wednesday, he was panicking about this very thing. Today, he's ready to punch someone. Greedy coward.

It makes him wonder how much of the governor's political platform is fake.

Next to the environmentalism and the queer issues, there's not much left for him to lie about, they were that prominent in his last campaign.

But thinking about it now, he's the exact kind of person who wouldn’t support extended paid parental leave.

For a moment, the thought feels uncharitable. And then, Reid thinks: He can go fuck himself. Clearly, Mackenzie doesn't deserve an ounce of good faith. The only thing he really deserves is for this to go public as quickly as possible, while there are still eyes on the story.

Feeling overwhelmed, Reid decides to clear his head with a walk. The dark streets offer no comfort, but at least the physical activity helps him forget the problem, if only for a little while.

It takes sitting down at his desk again for him to realize that he still needs to tell Marisol about this.

But when he opens his messenger app, he sees Everett has written him five messages since noon on Friday.

Reid hasn't answered a single one of them.

Some of them have been waiting for him for over a day.

hey had a good start to ur day?

my father is in the shittiest mood today. ur lucky ur not here anymore. hows the office treating u?

damn it ur prbly working. im sorry. ill stop disturbing u at work.

i was going to wish u a good weekend but then i realized that theres an actual chance u havent started it yet. have u left the office? Pls say yes

is everything ok? u can tell me not to bother u but im getting kinda worried.

Reid doesn't know what to do with that. So he does nothing. He lays down on his carpet, stares at his ceiling, and hums to himself. If he wants to still manage to eat something today, then this is going to have to be a problem for tomorrow.