EIGHT
ESSIE
Five Years Later
Hatred is a curious thing. It feeds you, threatens to completely overwhelm you, yet at the same time, it leaves you feeling hollow. Hungry. It encases you, enshrouds you, but you never feel warm, never feel protected. It’s an empty thing, yet it can completely consume you, demanding you never forgive, never forget. Five years have passed, and I still haven’t forgotten what happened, haven’t forgotten the pain of losing my brother, haven’t forgotten the promise I made that day I stood in the freezing cold at Vaughn’s gravesite.
Back then, people were very fond of telling me that time would make things easier, time would heal the pain. Give it enough time and I’d be able to get on with my life, I’d be able to move forward. In one sense, I suppose they were right. For weeks after Vaughn’s death, I wasn’t able to do anything. I slept on Max’s couch. I went through dozens of boxes of tissues. I stopped eating. I couldn’t sleep. I was a zombie. I would have been evicted from the apartment eventually, but I didn’t let it get that far. I only went back there once to get the few irreplaceable bits and pieces. There wasn’t much. The Christmas tree Vaughn brought home had drooped and turned brittle because no one had been there to water it. I left behind our meager furniture and the few small treasures that me and Vaughn had saved for. The new tenants could have them, for what they were worth, or the landlord could throw them away. It didn’t matter to me.
The only thing I took with me was a bag full of clothes, a small photo album containing what few pictures of my parents still remained, and the tiny rectangular box I found wrapped in Christmas paper in the back of Vaughn’s sock drawer. The gift he’d been hiding from me.
And, of course, I took my anger with me. Anger at myself, for not picking up that damn phone when Vaughn called. Anger at my brother for leaving me here alone. Anger at the Callahans. Mostly anger at the Callahans.
I stayed with Max for a while. He gave me my space. He only once tried to tell me that time would make the hurt better. Though he put it in such a way that didn’t make it sound patronizing, that didn’t minimize every awful feeling I was experiencing.
“It’s not always going to be like this,” he said. His own eyes had been red. Even though he’d been getting up and going to work and eating and getting sleep, I knew he was badly affected by Vaughn’s death, too. I knew that he missed him almost as much as I did.
I’ll always be indebted to Max for standing by me. For years he helped Vaughn out, but then it was my turn, it seemed. I’m not sure where I would’ve ended up if he hadn’t been there at the time to provide me with a place to stay, to force me to eat when the days were passing and I could barely take more than a bite or two.
It was Max who suggested I look into getting a job that might lead to something else, a job that could turn into a career, to give me some sort of focus outside of my grief. I think I surprised us both when I said I wanted that job to be at a law firm, and that I knew exactly which law firm I wanted to work at. I let Max assume I wanted to be a lawyer. I couldn’t tell him the real reason I wanted to work at Mendel, Goldstein and Hofstadter.
******
If Vaughn were alive today, he’d be proud of me for sure. Sometimes, I look around at my apartment, my own apartment, decorated with furnishings I chose and paid for myself, a closet full of professional clothes, a fridge stocked with food, and I wonder how it is I made it this far. By all accounts, I have made it. I’m successful. All those people who told me that time would make it easier and that I’d be able to get on with my life would say that’s indeed exactly what happened. I’m a responsible adult, handling her shit. I should probably be thinking about finding a boyfriend, getting married, maybe having a kid or two.
Thing is, that would require me losing focus. I can’t attribute my standard of living to a drive to succeed, or even a desire to show Vaughn that I really can take care of myself. There’s only been one thing driving me this whole time, and that is my need to see the Callahan Corporation completely destroyed.
It might seem like letting a seriously intense revenge plan overtake your every waking moment would render you an awful person to be around, the negativity turning you into someone that others avoided at all costs, but that hasn’t been the case at all. If you didn’t know me, you’d think I was like any other girl in her mid-twenties, who hangs out with friends, goes out on dates, and has a favorite bar she hits up after work.
Four and a half years ago, I was hired as the legal secretary at Mendel, Goldstein & Hofstadter. For a while, Arturo Mendel was one of my bosses, though he had no idea who I was. To him, I was just another eager-faced secretary who toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer but decided the path was too rigorous, the demands too great.
“A career in law is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea,” Arturo told me one day, not long after I’d first started working there. He’d said this to be kind, to make me not feel bad about myself. I’d had to bite my tongue. I came so close to telling him I could give a shit about a career in law. That there was only one reason why I was there, and that reason was Aidan Callahan.
I don’t think Arturo knew I was the girl he called that day to offer to pay for the funeral. Perhaps my name sounded vaguely familiar when I first started working for him. More likely, he’d long forgotten about the poor girl and her dead brother the moment he’d signed off on Vaughn’s funeral costs.
Even if I wanted to tell Arturo who I really was now, long after the fact, I wouldn’t be able to. He died three years ago from pancreatic cancer. It was a bad way to go, and startling how quickly the disease ravaged his body. The doctors gave him six months; he died after three weeks, the poor bastard. I ended up quite liking him by the time he went.
I attended the funeral. I went in part because I did want to pay my respects to Arturo, but also because I knew that Aidan would be there. And in a church where well over five hundred people had gathered, Aidan Callahan stood and gave a eulogy. The whole time he was talking, I hid in the back of the church and thought about how I was going to bring him down.
My friend Julia thinks my hatred is misplaced. “He didn’t do it, Essie.” She’s said this more than once. “It doesn’t make sense that you bear all of this anger toward him. He wasn’t the one driving. And even if he had been, it was an accident.”
But how will she ever understand? She, who grew up with two parents, a roof over her head, never worrying about where her next meal was coming from, or who was going to protect her. The most traumatizing thing that’s ever happened to Julia was when she got passed over for a promotion. She thinks holding onto this is not good for my mental state of being, that I need to let it go, that I’m not honoring Vaughn.
“You need to forgive, Ess. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to move on.”
That’s what she doesn’t understand, though. What most people who know me, who know what happened to my brother, don’t understand. I don’t want to move on. Moving on suggests that you’ve accepted what is, and even though I know I can’t change the fact that Vaughn is no longer alive, I don’t have to accept it. I simply refuse.
Today, my inbox is piled with legal briefs that need preparing. At this point, I’m probably so familiar with most of the legal terminology that I wouldn’t be that bad a lawyer anyways. The whole legal system infuriates me, though. I know exactly how much the lawyers here charge each client, and while it might not be a big deal for a huge multi-billion dollar corporation like Callahan, for regular folks who need legal representation, their fee is completely out of the question. People mortgage their houses and go bankrupt just to be able to afford a lawyer. It’s maddening.
None of the lawyers here seem to mind how crippling their fees are, of course. Just like the funeral director who wouldn’t give me a break when Vaughn died.
I work here in this office, hoping that one day Aidan Callahan will simply step out of the elevator and appear like a ghost. Since Arturo’s no longer able to handle the Callahan accounts, Aidan occasionally attends for meetings with Mr. Goldstein, though those meetings are few and far between. The Callahan Corporation pays a hefty fifty thousand dollar a month retainer at the firm; that means more often than not, Mr. Goldstein, much as it pains him, has to step out of his sanctuary and trek across the city to make personal visits.
Just because Aidan doesn’t come here as often as I’d like—seeing his perfect fucking face and his perfect fucking hair and his perfect fucking smile spurs me on—doesn’t mean I ever forget why I’m here.
No. I never forget. And it pays to be patient. When you work at a place as large as this, a place that deals with so many clients, both individuals and corporations, it’s easy for things to get lost in the chaos. Easy for a few file folders to slip into your stack that have nothing to do with the subpoena you’re meant to be drafting or the legal research you’ve been asked to conduct. Some people would’ve given up at this point. Would have decided there were better ways to get revenge, or maybe just given up on the revenge part altogether, but not me. All I needed was patience.
And after all these years, biding my time, waiting it out with the patience of a goddamn saint, today was the day. Today was the day when everything finally clicked into place. I’ve spent countless hours poring over documents, records and financial statements. I’ve taken stuff home with me, even though it would have been an automatic jail sentence if anyone had found it. Mendel, Goldstein & Hofstadter’s Callahan Corp files have been my nightly reading material for years. I’ve flipped through documents while I drink my coffee in the morning, and then I’ve taken them back to work and replaced them before anyone could notice. All of that’s over now, though. I’ve finally found what I’ve been after, what I knew would eventually show up. See, a corporation as big as Callahan’s is never perfect. They always trip up somewhere. There’s always something that someone is trying to hide. And I found it.
It’s not common practice for big corporations to keep their financial records on file with their lawyers. I wouldn’t have even bothered looking through them at all, but after I’d exhausted every other avenue open to me—there were no law suits, no litigations, no toxic waste dumping off the coast of Florida, no sexual harassment. Nothing—I’d run out of options. I learned how to read a profit and loss sheet very quickly. Everything was squeaky clean after Aidan took over the company. Everything added up. I was beginning to lose hope. But then I came across some of the P & L sheets from before Aidan took over the company. That’s when I hit pay dirt. The profits were consistently so much lower than when Aidan took over. It made no sense. So I dug, and I dug and I dug.
Turns out Alex Callahan was siphoning money from the company, stealing from the share holders. Highly illegal stuff. Not technically Aidan’s fault, but it will do. It’ll be enough to bring his world crashing down around his ears.
So.
Time to put the plan into action.
I sit down at my computer and begin to compose an email.