Chapter 6
The soft scratching of the pencil stopped the moment the door creaked wider. Leo didn't look up immediately; he continued smoothing a strip of translucent tape over a jagged tear in the green paper, his small hands working with a practiced, delicate precision that reminded Arthur painfully of his late wife.
"I didn't mean to destroy it," Arthur said softly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the air purifier in the corner of the room. He stepped across the threshold, feeling like an intruder in his own home.
Leo finally raised his head. His expression was unreadable—neither angry nor forgiving, just profoundly tired. "You always do this," the boy said quietly, not raising his voice, which made the words hurt all the more. "Whenever something gets too real, or too messy, or reminds you of Grandma, you just try to bulldoze it. You did it to her studio. You did it to your own drafting board ten years ago. And today, you did it to me because the people downstairs were watching."
Arthur walked slowly over to the desk, his expensive leather shoes squeaking slightly on the hardwood floor. He looked down at the desk surface. Scattered around the taped-up drawing were dozens of other sketches—not just the community center, but detailed architectural studies of treehouses, bridges, and birdhouses, all drawn with an imaginative freedom Arthur had systematically beaten out of his own life decades ago.
"I was afraid," Arthur admitted, the confession dragging out of his throat like rusted iron. He pulled up a modern designer chair and sat down awkwardly, his knees nearly hitting the underside of the small desk. "When I saw that green folder... it felt like looking backward. And in my world, looking backward means you're losing ground."
"Grandma didn't think looking backward was losing ground," Leo said, picking up a wooden pencil and rolling it between his fingers. "She said you have to know where the foundation cracked if you want to build something that won't fall down in an earthquake."
Arthur looked at his son, really looked at him—not as a reflection of his own corporate brand, not as an investment in the Vance family legacy, but as a separate, beautiful human being trying to find his own way. The digital video circulating online felt miles away now, eclipsed entirely by the quiet gravity of this bedroom.
"The board is going to want my head tomorrow," Arthur said, offering a faint, self-deprecating smile. "The video has half a million views already. Some tech blogger called me 'The Corporate Monster of St. Jude.'"
"Maybe you deserved it," Leo replied honestly.
May you like
Arthur let out a genuine, exhausted laugh—the first real laugh he had produced in months. "Yeah. Can't argue with that." He reached out, his hand hovering over the taped-up green paper before resting gently beside it. "Do you think... if you're willing... we could finish this drawing together? The right way?"
Leo looked at his father for a long, measuring moment. Then, slowly, a faint, tentative smile broke through his solemn expression, and he pushed an empty sheet of green paper across the desk toward Arthur.
