Chapter 36 - The Call Before Breakfast
The morning their peaceful life cracked open, Roman Gallow was arguing with a stuffed rabbit.
Its battery compartment required a screwdriver.
Ellie required music immediately.
Neither appeared willing to compromise.
Paige stood beside the kitchen counter, watching her husband examine the toy with the concentration he once reserved for men who disappointed him.
“She’s four months old,” Paige said. “She doesn’t know you’re losing.”
Ellie slapped both hands against her high chair.
Roman looked up.
“She suspects.”
The apartment smelled of toast and the first trays of bread rising downstairs. Rain tapped the window above the sink. Someone in the courtyard was dragging a trash bin over uneven bricks.
Ordinary sounds.
Paige had learned not to confuse ordinary with unimportant.
Her phone vibrated beside the butter dish.
She glanced at the screen, expecting the clinic.
Instead, Roman’s phone began ringing too.
They looked at each other.
Something in his expression changed before he answered.
“Gallow.”
He listened.
The screwdriver stopped moving.
“Has everyone been accounted for?”
Paige put down her cup.
Roman stood so abruptly that his chair struck the cabinet behind him.
“Don’t move anything else. Get outside and let the responders work.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?”
“A storage rack collapsed at Harbor Cooperative Logistics. East warehouse.”
His workplace.
The employee-owned company where he spent three days a week negotiating routes, checking schedules, and learning to tolerate votes he did not win.
“Is anyone hurt?”
“One confirmed. Owen Price.”
Roman reached for his coat, then stopped beside Ellie.
Their daughter smiled at him.
That was the terrible thing about emergencies. The world did not change all at once. Somewhere, a baby still expected her father to make a rabbit sing.
Roman kissed Ellie’s forehead.
“I’ll call when I know more.”
Paige nodded.
“And Roman?”
He turned.
“Let the responders do their jobs.”
“I know.”
She believed he meant it.
She also knew that knowing and managing were different things.
By nine, the first images were online.
A fire engine outside the warehouse.
Workers standing in rain without coats.
An ambulance leaving through the loading gate.
Then a photograph of Roman arriving.
The caption called the company his.
It wasn’t.
He held one membership vote, like the other employee owners. His position gave him responsibility for transportation planning, not ownership of everyone around him.
That distinction disappeared beneath his name.
FORMER CRIME BOSS AT CENTER OF WATERFRONT DISASTER.
Paige closed the article.
Helen arrived twenty minutes later, carrying soup nobody had asked for and wearing the expression of a woman prepared to make herself useful without discussing it.
“Go,” she said.
“I haven’t asked—”
“You’ve looked at your coat six times.”
Paige looked toward Ellie.
Helen softened.
“She’ll be here when you get back.”
At the hospital, Roman stood outside the surgical waiting area with rain drying on his shoulders.
There was blood on one cuff.
Paige stopped.
“Not mine,” he said immediately. “I helped hold a dressing after they brought Owen out.”
She touched his arm.
“How bad?”
“His leg. Internal injuries. They’re still operating.”
A young woman rose from a chair across the room.
She had a paramedic training sweatshirt on over pajama pants and a phone clenched in one hand. Her hair had been pulled back badly, as though she had done it in a moving car.
“You’re his wife?”
Paige turned.
“Yes. I’m Paige.”
“Mara Price.”
“Owen’s daughter?”
Mara nodded.
Then she looked at Roman.
“They told me you were in charge.”
“I coordinate transport. Adrian Shaw chairs the board. Warehouse operations report through Martin Voss.”
The names sounded useless in the waiting room.
Roman seemed to hear that too.
“I’m trying to establish exactly what happened.”
“My father called me at six this morning.”
Mara’s voice shook, but she kept it level.
“He said they were sending them into the east section again.”
Roman went still.
“Again?”
“He said there had been a problem yesterday.”
Paige watched his face.
“What problem?” she asked.
Mara looked between them.
“You don’t know?”
“No,” Roman said.
“My father photographed a bent support. He told somebody it wasn’t safe.”
For a moment, only the vending machine made noise.
Then Roman stepped away and called the operations office.
Paige did not follow him.
She sat beside Mara.
“Is there anyone you want me to call?”
“My aunt’s coming.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t need the clinic lady to manage me.”
The words were sharp.
Paige accepted them.
“Then I’ll sit here unless you’d rather I didn’t.”
Mara stared at the floor.
After a while, she said, “He packs my lunch when I work nights.”
Paige waited.
“I’m twenty-three. I tell him I can pack my own lunch.”
Her face folded.
“He puts notes in it.”
Paige moved the tissue box closer.
She did not tell Mara her father would survive.
She wanted to.
Wanting did not make it a promise she could offer.
Roman returned with his phone still in his hand.
“There was an inspection request yesterday. The east aisle was supposed to remain closed pending review.”
“Supposed to?” Mara asked.
“I’m finding out who reopened it.”
She stood.
“My father doesn’t need you to find a sentence that makes this somebody else’s fault.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
The waiting-room door opened.
A man in a navy overcoat entered carrying three coffees.
Adrian Shaw was handsome in the polished, reassuring way that made people lower their voices around him. He had joined the cooperative during its restructuring, bringing commercial contacts and an impressive ability to make banks listen.
Paige had met him twice.
He had remembered everyone’s name.
Now he placed the coffees on a table and approached Mara.
“We’re devastated,” he said.
“My father isn’t dead.”
Adrian blinked.
“Of course. I meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
Roman turned toward him.
“Who authorized the east aisle?”
Adrian glanced at Mara.
“This isn’t the place.”
“It’s where the question is being asked.”
A brief hardness appeared beneath Adrian’s expression.
Then it vanished.
“The preliminary schedule carries your approval.”
Roman stared at him.
“My transportation schedule?”
“Your authorization was attached to the overnight receiving packet.”
“That doesn’t reopen a closed warehouse aisle.”
“No one is suggesting otherwise.”
But Paige heard what he had already done.
Placed Roman’s name beside the collapse.
Placed uncertainty inside the room.
Adrian lowered his voice.
“Let’s not make statements until we have the facts.”
Mara gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“That’s easy when it isn’t your father behind the door.”
The surgeon came out shortly after noon.
Owen was alive.
His injuries were serious. More procedures would likely follow. The coming days mattered.
Mara pressed both hands over her mouth.
Her aunt arrived in time to hold her.
Paige stepped back to give them space.
Roman stood motionless until the surgeon left.
Then Mara looked at him again.
“Price,” she said.
He frowned slightly.
“My last name. Does it mean anything to you?”
Roman’s face changed.
Paige saw recognition arrive slowly, and with it something worse than surprise.
“Daniel Price,” he said.
“My grandfather.”
Silence spread between them.
“He owned a repair garage near the old terminal,” Mara continued. “Until your family decided staying open should cost extra.”
Roman did not deny it.
Paige felt cold beneath her coat.
Mara’s eyes filled again, but this time she refused to wipe them.
“Granddad lost the shop. Dad spent years paying off what was left.”
Roman lowered his gaze.
“I remember.”
“Good.”
She stepped closer.
“Because everybody keeps telling me you’re a different man now.”
From somewhere beyond the doors came the distant sound of a monitor.
May you like
Mara looked directly at him.
“My father had better live long enough to find out.”
