“I lost it because Victor chose to fire me.

You don’t get to take responsibility for his choice.”

Thomas looked at the flowers and nodded.

“Your mother would have said that.”

Claire smiled.

“You keep telling me what my mother would have said.

Sometimes I think she must have been impossible.”

“She could be,” Thomas replied.

“Particularly when she was right.”

Claire stayed until he grew tired.

On her way out, she saw Audrey reviewing documents in the hallway and realized how much invisible work held a complicated case together.

There was no single rescuer, not Thomas, not the judge, not the investigator.

Progress depended on many people doing their jobs carefully while the rest of life continued around them.

The mediation moved forward when Dorian’s insurer agreed to participate in discussions about certain professional liability claims, without conceding coverage or wrongdoing.

The parties separated restitution questions from future governance.

Claims based on specific transactions were evaluated using bank records and employment evidence.

Questions about ownership interests required separate agreement about valuation dates and applicable contractual rights.

The work remained tedious, but for the first time numbers appeared beside proposals rather than accusations.

Estelle asked that any settlement acknowledge the original workers by name, with consent from families of those who had died.

Bernard wanted privacy and declined public recognition.

Hattie requested that her share, if any, be paid promptly rather than tied to future restaurant profits.

Claire supported arrangements that preserved individual choices.

She also asked that no release of claims require participants to assert events they did not believe were true.

The mediator smiled faintly at the last condition.

“You have been reading agreements carefully,” she said.

“I learned late,” Claire replied.

“I’m trying not to learn the same lesson twice.”

That evening Jonah received an acceptance letter from a university with a substantial scholarship.

He read it aloud at the kitchen table, stumbling over the financial-aid details.

Claire hugged him so hard he dropped the envelope.

They celebrated with grocery-store cake and a video call to Nora.

The restaurant matter was still unresolved, but the news reminded Claire that a person’s future could move forward before every wrong in the past had been corrected.

Jonah asked whether Ruth would have wanted him to study engineering or something more closely connected to finance.

Claire told him their mother would have wanted him to pursue work that challenged him and allowed him to live honestly.

He said he hoped to build safer medical devices.

Claire thought of the inhaler in his backpack and told him that sounded like a good place to start.

Spring arrived with an unusually warm week and a change in the mediation.

The accounting team had completed its first reconciled estimate of the employee participation interests and the funds that should have been reserved.