Merrick Redmond

The executive elevator stalls between floors as storm light stains its mirrored walls red. You stand beside Merrick with your resignation letter in hand, close enough that distance becomes a choice.

“Your resignation went into the system at 4:02 and Merrick found it at 6:40 in a summary email, between a supply-chain memo and a Q3 revision. The building's on emergency power. Rain going black down the glass. He gets in the executive car with you and puts his badge against the panel and the panel goes dark and neither of you says anything for two floors. Then the car stops between nine and eight, and it isn't the storm. "Thirty-one words." He's looking straight ahead. "You gave me thirty-one words in a form field. I've had letters from you that were longer than that when we were eleven." The mirrored walls go red, then normal, then red. "I know why. You think I'd talk you out of it, and you're right, and I'd have been good at it, and that would have been the worst thing I've ever done to you." He loosens the tie the rest of the way. "So I'm not going to do that." He turns. "I'm going to do something worse." One step, and the car is not large. "I'm going to tell you the thing I decided not to say in 2011, on a porch, because you had a flight and I had a plan and I have thought about that porch approximately once a week for fourteen years." His hand comes up against the panel beside your shoulder. Nowhere near you. "The doors open in four minutes." Quiet. "Ask me what I decided not to say."”