Chapter 22: History
Veronica found him at lunch.
Simon was working through a turkey sandwich and not thinking about anything in particular — a rare state of affairs that he had been enjoying for approximately four minutes — when she sat down across from him without asking and said, "Where's Meg?"
"Not here today." Simon took another bite.
"I can see that. Why?"
He set the sandwich down. "Because a certain private investigator's timeline slipped, which meant the rumor had enough time to reach Meg's father. Who is, as it turns out, not immune to hearing the same thing repeated enough times." He said it without heat. "So Meg is home. Having a bad day. Taking the time she needs."
Veronica was quiet for a moment in the way she went quiet when information landed harder than she expected.
"Her own father," she said.
"That's how rumors work." Simon picked the sandwich back up. "They don't need to be true. They just need to be consistent. You say something about someone enough times, in enough voices, and eventually the people who know better start to wonder." He looked at her. "You've been on the receiving end of that. You know how it works."
Veronica didn't answer.
"You know," Simon said, after a moment, "you don't need to look at me like that. I'm not blaming you. I'm telling you the situation."
"I know." She folded her hands on the table. "I'm going to move faster. I'm close — I've got the access logs narrowed to three people. By tonight I'll have one."
"Good."
A pause.
"Simon." Veronica's voice changed — carefully, like someone picking up something fragile. "I owe you an apology."
He looked at her.
"For my dad," she said. "For what he did. I know what happened — I figured it out, eventually. All of it." She held his eye. "He had no right to do what he did. And you never — you just let me think it was your choice. You protected his image with me and you let me think you just walked away."
Simon was quiet for a moment.
"He had reasons," Simon said finally. "Not good ones, but reasons. He was the sheriff. I was seventeen and running with Dom's crew and the optics were — not great. I understood his position even if I didn't agree with it."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No. It doesn't." He shrugged — not dismissively, just settling the weight of it. "But it was a long time ago. It's done."
"I'm still sorry."
"I know." Simon looked at the table for a moment. "For what it's worth — I never blamed you. You didn't know. And your dad — he's a complicated guy, but he's not a bad one. He was trying to protect you in the way he knew how."
Veronica absorbed this. "You're more generous about it than I would be."
"I've had more time to get there."
They sat with that for a while. The cafeteria moved around them — the usual Tuesday noise, the usual hierarchies operating at their usual frequencies.
It occurred to Simon, not for the first time, that the version of himself that had existed at fifteen and sixteen had been navigating situations he'd had no real preparation for, and had made most of the decisions with what he had available. Some of them had been good decisions. Some had been understandable ones that he still lived with. That was probably true of most people.
"I can get you more money if you need it," Simon said, returning to practical ground. "Whatever it takes to finish this."
"I don't need more money. I need forty-eight more hours." Veronica pulled out her notebook. "I'm going after the admin access logs tonight. There's a student council member who had database credentials for the scheduling system — they were supposed to be read-only, but someone elevated their permissions about three weeks ago without a formal request. That's my thread."
"Pull it."
"I intend to." She closed the notebook. "I'll go see Meg after school."
"She'd appreciate that." Simon paused. "She needs someone who knows her from before all this. Someone who doesn't need to be convinced she didn't do anything."
Veronica nodded. No qualification, no caveat.
The other thing sat between them for another minute before Simon said it.
"There's something you should probably know," he said. "About why I've been — visible lately. The cars this morning, the cafeteria thing yesterday."
"I've been thinking about that."
"The people who are going after Meg, they picked a target who they thought was undefended. The story they're telling works because nobody with weight was pushing back on it." Simon looked at her. "That changes when there's visible pushback. It doesn't fix the underlying problem — that's your job — but it changes the calculus for anyone thinking about adding to it."
"You made yourself a bigger target in the process," Veronica said.
"I know."
"Administration is going to watch you from here on. Every time something happens in this school, your name is going to come up first."
"I know that too."
She studied him. "Then why?"
Simon considered how honest to be.
"Because Meg needed it to stop hurting for a day," he said. "And because—" He stopped. Started again. "The way things are going, this situation is probably going to run its course one way or another. With Meg's family, with what they're going to think about who she's with. I made a calculation."
Veronica looked at him with the specific attention she used when she was parsing something she hadn't expected.
"If her family sees me as a liability — as someone who causes scenes and rolls with street racers — it makes the conversation they're already going to have easier," Simon said. "It gives Meg an exit that doesn't require her to choose between me and them. She can go to Columbia, do what she's supposed to do, and the narrative practically writes itself."
Veronica was very still.
"You're engineering the reason for the breakup," she said. "Deliberately."
"I'm not engineering anything. I'm just — not getting in the way of what's probably inevitable." He said it with more steadiness than he felt. "She has a real future. A good one. I have—" He gestured at nothing in particular. "Complications. I don't want my complications to become her ceiling."
"Simon." Veronica's voice had an edge that wasn't quite anger. "You're making a decision for her. Without her input. Don't you think she should get a vote on her own life?"
"She'd vote wrong."
"You don't know that."
"I know her," he said quietly. "She'd stay because she's loyal, not because it serves her. And six years from now she'd wake up somewhere she didn't plan to be and she'd make peace with it because that's who she is, and she'd be fine, and she'd never quite say the thing she was thinking." He stopped. "I don't want that for her."
Veronica was quiet for a long moment.
"You're smarter than I gave you credit for," she said finally. It didn't sound entirely like a compliment. "And considerably more reckless with yourself than you are with other people."
"That's one way to put it."
"It's the accurate way." She looked at her notebook, then at him. "This conversation stays between us."
"That's all I'm asking."
"Does Meg know any of it?"
"No."
"Good. Keep it that way." She stood up. "And for what it's worth — you're wrong about one thing."
"Which thing?"
"She wouldn't vote wrong." Veronica picked up her tray. "But that's your call to make, not mine."
She walked away.
Simon sat with the remainder of his lunch and the remainder of the conversation and didn't do anything with either of them for a while.
He caught Veronica after school, in the parking lot, backpack on shoulder, keys in hand.
"One more thing," he said. He held out a small box — cardboard, unassuming, closed with a folded flap.
Veronica looked at it without taking it.
"Would you give that to Meg? When you see her tonight."
"What is it?"
"A bracelet. I've worn it since ninth grade. It's supposed to bring good luck, which I know sounds ridiculous—"
"It is ridiculous," Veronica confirmed.
"It's also the only thing I can think to give her right now that doesn't feel like an apology for something I haven't done wrong." He kept his hand out. "Just give it to her."
Veronica looked at the box for a moment longer. Then she took it.
"She's going to know it's yours," she said.
"I know."
"And she's going to read into it."
"I know that too."
Veronica put the box in her jacket pocket. "You're a lot of work, Simon Lewis."
"I've been told."
"Go to your job." She turned toward the student lot. "I'll take care of Meg."
"I know you will." He started toward Mia's borrowed car — the Supra was in the garage getting the fuel lines checked after last night. "Veronica."
She looked back.
"If you need backup on the investigation — not the kind that files paperwork, the other kind — call me. Some problems are easier with two people."
Veronica studied him for a moment.
"I actually might take you up on that," she said, which was more than Simon had expected.
"Good." He opened the car door. "I haven't blocked your number."
"Very generous of you."
"I know." He got in. "Go see Meg."
"Already going," she said, and walked away without looking back.
Simon sat in the borrowed car for a moment before he started it.
The parking lot was thinning out — buses pulling away, students walking in loose groups toward the neighborhood, the school day fully dissolving into the afternoon.
He thought about Veronica's last point. She wouldn't vote wrong.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
He started the car and drove to work.
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