Chapter 7 - THE COMPUTER IN OUR HOUSE
"The computer in my home office?"
Celeste nodded.
"Grant said you submitted the approval yourself."
I stared at her.
For eleven years, our home office had contained two desks.
Grant's enormous mahogany desk stood beneath the window.
Mine was smaller.
A plain wooden table squeezed between a filing cabinet and the wall.
He used to joke that my side of the room looked like a school science fair.
Eventually, I stopped working there.
But I never removed the old computer.
It held archived design files, early correspondence, photographs, and notes from the years before Cedar Line could afford proper offices.
Grant sometimes used it.
I had never imagined that mattered.
"Do you have the original technical report?" I asked Celeste.
She hesitated.
"I have my copy."
"Then show me."
Celeste opened her bag and removed a folder filled with production notes.
One page contained a test result from six months earlier.
The failed secondary warning circuit had been clearly identified.
The engineer's recommendation was straightforward.
Do not approve the modified board for installation.
Below the recommendation was Celeste's signature.
Her real signature.
I looked up.
"You knew the product wasn't ready."
"I knew the prototype failed one test. Grant promised another design review."
"And when did that happen?"
She didn't answer.
I waited.
Finally, she whispered, "It didn't."
Tessa crossed her arms.
"Then why did you let the project continue?"
Celeste's eyes filled.
"I told myself the production team would fix it. Then we had contracts, investors, deadlines. Every week it became harder to admit we had moved forward too soon."
I had no sympathy for the choices she made.
But I understood the machinery of denial.
A small wrong became easier to defend than to correct.
Until it was no longer small.
"Did you know Grant was using a counterfeit licensing agreement?" I asked.
"No. I thought the patent rights were properly licensed. He showed us an executed agreement."
"With my copied signature."
She closed her eyes.
"I understand that now."
"Understanding doesn't undo it."
"I know."
For a moment, we sat in silence.
Then Celeste removed another sheet.
It was a manufacturing cost comparison.
Two circuit designs.
One included the required backup warning.
The other removed it.
Beside the cheaper design, someone had written:
Use revised board for production. Cost target takes priority.
The initials were G.W.
Grant Whitcomb.
I knew his handwriting.
Especially the sharp angle of the W.
Celeste watched my face.
"I tried to question that instruction."
"What did he say?"
"That you designed the original system years ago and didn't understand what modern manufacturing required."
The familiar insult landed with surprising force.
Even in a conference room with the woman who had slept with my husband, Grant's voice seemed to fill the space.
Mara likes her little projects.
I looked at the paper again.
"Will you provide this to an independent investigator?"
Celeste hesitated.
Doing so could destroy her career.
It could expose her own failure to insist on corrective testing.
She had been part of the decision-making process.
"I need legal advice," she said.
"Then get it."
She looked surprised.
I continued.
"I'm not asking you to protect me from your mistakes. I'm asking you to stop protecting him from the truth."
After she left, I sat beside the window for a long time.
Tessa remained nearby.
"Do you believe her?" she asked.
"I believe the test results. I believe the manufacturing instructions. I don't know how much else she knew."
That evening, I visited Walter.
Not through Grant.
Not through Eleanor.
I called the assisted-living community where he had moved after his recovery and arranged a visit directly.
He was sitting near a window when I arrived.
His white hair looked thinner than I remembered.
But his smile was the same.
"Mara?"
I crossed the room.
He stood slowly, leaning on his cane.
When he hugged me, I nearly lost my composure.
"I thought you didn't want to see me," he said.
I stepped back.
"What?"
"Grant said you were busy with your business. He said you were putting distance between yourself and the family."
My eyes burned.
"Walter, I've been asking about you for months."
He stared at me.
Then his expression changed.
"That boy."
Two words.
So much disappointment inside them.
I showed him the silver watch Eleanor had given me.
He smiled sadly.
"I wanted you to have it because you gave me time I might not have had otherwise."
I sat beside him.
For the first time, I told him the truth about the divorce.
Not every technical detail.
Just enough.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he looked at the watch.
"I remember the day Grant asked me about your invention."
My heart tightened.
"What did he ask?"
"He wanted to know whether you had ever given him ownership of it."
I stared at him.
"When?"
"About a year ago."
That was months before the acquisition negotiations began.
"What did you say?"
Walter looked ashamed.
"I told him he should be proud of you. I said an invention belongs to the person who did the work."
He paused.
"Then he asked whether you still had the blue notebook."
My breath caught.
The blue notebook.
My original design journal.
It had disappeared years earlier when I moved my equipment from our house to the rented laboratory.
I had assumed it was lost in the move.
May you like
Walter gripped my hand.
"Mara, why would Grant need that notebook if the inventions already belonged to him?"
