“Pierce,” Mike said, when the line finally picked up on the fourth ring.
“It’s Mike Hannigan.
I had a follow-up on the call from earlier this week.”
There was the small pause of a man checking whether this required him to sit up straighter.
“Mr.
Hannigan.
Of course.
What can I help you with?”
Mike had spent the better part of three days not making this call long enough to convince himself the question wasn’t worth asking, then long enough after that to convince himself it was exactly worth asking, precisely because it wasn’t worth asking, which was its own kind of tell.
He’d let it sit through two practice hours and one entire gig before he finally picked up the phone on a Thursday afternoon with nothing better to do than find out.
“You mentioned the discretionary adjustment was part of a broader review,” Mike said.
“I wanted to ask about the notice provision.
Most trust instruments I’m aware of require the trustee to give the beneficiary formal notice before a change like that takes effect not a courtesy call after the fact, an actual notice period, spelled out in the document.
I’m curious whether that provision exists in this one, and if it does, whether it was followed.”
The silence on the other end ran a half-second longer than any silence in their previous conversation had, and Mike could hear, underneath it, the quiet work of a man recalculating who exactly he was talking to.
“That’s a fairly technical question, Mr.
Hannigan.”
“It’s a fairly technical document.”
“It is.” Pierce’s polish hadn’t cracked, not exactly, but something underneath it had shifted register, the easy conversational cadence replaced by something more careful, more measured, a man picking each word up and checking its weight before setting it down.
“I’d have to review the specific notice language before I could answer with any precision.
Most instruments of this vintage do carry some form of notice provision, yes.
Whether the timing here satisfied it is that’s not something I can confirm off the top of my head.”
“I understand.
“May I ask what prompted the question?”
Mike let that sit a moment, not because he needed the time but because the question deserved an honest answer and honest answers were worth a beat of consideration even when they were short.
“I used to do this kind of work,” he said.
“Not trust law specifically, but adjacent.
I know what a formal review looks like on paper, and I know what a quarter’s worth of housekeeping usually looks like, and the two don’t always match.
I just wanted to know which one this was.”
“I see.” Pierce’s voice had gone entirely careful now, the practiced warmth still present but functioning differently, no longer disarming so much as defensive, a man realizing the conversation he’d expected to have wasn’t the one actually happening.
“I’ll look into the notice language and get back to you.
That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to want clarified.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Is there anything else you wanted to raise, while I have you?”
“No.
That was the whole thing.”
“Alright.
I’ll follow up once I’ve had a chance to review.” A pause, and then, in a voice that had dropped most of its earlier polish entirely, replaced by something closer to plain curiosity: “You said adjacent work.
May I ask law school, or practice?”
“Practice.
A few years, before the piano.”
“Huh.” Just that, a single syllable that carried more information than a longer sentence would have the sound of a man revising an entire mental file on the spot, the version of Mike Hannigan he’d walked into this call believing in quietly replaced by a different one.
“Well.
I’ll be in touch, Mr.
Hannigan.” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Thanks for your time.”
The line went dead.
Mike set the receiver back in its cradle and stood there a moment in the kitchen, one hand still resting on the counter, feeling the particular texture of a conversation that had gone exactly as planned and cost him something anyway not money, not yet, nothing he could point to and name, just the quiet certainty that Alan Pierce was, at this exact moment, typing a note into a file somewhere, or making a call of his own, and that the note would say something closer to sharper than expected than to nothing to worry about.
He hadn’t threatened anything.
He’d asked one question, plainly, the way a curious person asks a question they already suspect the answer to, and he’d meant every word of the reason he’d given he had done this work, he did know what a real review looked like, and the distinction actually did matter to him beyond the money.
That part wasn’t strategy.
That part was just true.
But he also knew, standing there with his hand still on the counter, that true things could function as strategy whether or not you meant them to.
Somewhere in a file at Whitcombe and Reyes, a small, precise fact had just been logged: the piano player still had the instincts.
The piano player had noticed the notice provision.
He didn’t know yet what that fact would be used for.
He suspected, without being able to say exactly why, that it wouldn’t stay filed for long.
hey quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
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P.S.
in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.