Page 61 of Small Sacrifices

When Reid drags himself into the office the next morning, Marisol only looks surprised at his presence for a moment before the interrogation starts. Why is he here? Is everything alright? Does he think he's in trouble with Mr. Wright? Did he ever find out what Everett wanted to talk about?

Between fortifying sips of his way-too-hot ginseng tea, he does his best to answer. Well, except for the question about Everett. On that one, he tries his hand at evasion.

"We talked. I think we're friends now."

The look Marisol throws his way in response is the embodiment of"bitch, please."

She makes a few more attempts at extracting information out of him, but Reid remains steadfast in his silence. After that, his workday is quite relaxed. One of the parents has written to ask him if he was the one to "accost" Ms. Greene in front of thehospital on Wednesday. But since he's not allowed to talk about it, he simply forwards the message to Mr. Wright. Aside from that, it's all quite relaxed.

Until one of the office printers whirs to life behind them. At first, he doesn't think anything of it. But then it doesn'tstopprinting until it runs out of paper. Marisol's phone rings at the same time as the printer starts beeping, so Reid goes to feed it.

"It's still printing," Marisol comments when Reid finally gets the paper loaded correctly.

Her eyes widen as she stares at the ever-growing mountain of paper—whatever the person on the other end of the line is saying cannot possibly be good. And indeed, once she politely agreed to their demands and said her goodbyes, she looks at Reid plaintively.

"Mr. Wright wants me to sight all of that for possibly damaging content until Tuesday morning."

Oh no. Reid looks down—how many pages are there already? A hundred? And the printer just keeps going. When Reid leans forward a bit, the little display proclaims to be printing page 132 of 257. Goddamn it. It's almost noon already. How is she supposed to manage that?

"What is all of this?"

Marisol sighs. "A backup of an old work laptop, apparently. Or of a folder on a shared server? I'm not really sure. Point is that other people could gain access to it, and they want to get ahead of it."

An old laptop. Reid remembers what Everett mentioned yesterday about finding pictures. But that's secondary to the pressing issue. This isn't Marisol's responsibility. Last week was about handling the fallout from the scandal; this feels like preparing for an inquiry.

Reid doesn't like the implication, and judging by Marisol's expression, neither does she. Reviewing 257 pages within theremaining eleven official working hours seems impossible. Reading through them might take a few hours for someone quick like Reid, but cross-referencing documents and writing up a report takes time.

"Do you want me to help?" Reid asks.

"Could you?" Marisol looks so relieved that for a moment, Reid worries if something is wrong. "I still have so many other documents that he wants me to get through until this evening."

Right. Why ensure employees have a manageable workload when you can just pile on more tasks until they break? Reid notices a printout of an email and decides it's preferable to wading through more complex materials. He offers to tackle the emails.

Regret hits him quickly as he realizes he's now committed to over half of the printouts. But seeing Marisol's overwhelmed state, struggling to organize the paperwork into neat piles, makes him reluctant to back out. He lines up his highlighters and sticky notes, and settles in for a long task ahead.

Almost none of it is interesting. There are a few emails that definitely should not have been written on a work computer—Reid physically cringes at some of the pet names Mackenzie used for his wife, and he cringes even more at the explicit messages he wrote to a woman who is definitelynothis wife. Guiltily, he hopes Everett is aware of this affair. Reid doesn't want to know something about Everett's father that Everett doesn't know. Especially not something likethis.

But while sordid and definitely unethical, these emails don't seem to document anything illegal. Reid still makes a note of them, so that no one can say they weren't warned. An affair is not the worst thing that could be exposed in this scenario, but it would still be bad.

It's already been dark out for quite some time when Marisol's phone rings again. Reid jumps in surprise, but Marisol startlesso badly that one of her precarious paper towers cascades down from her desk. She's still cursing when she picks up the call, the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder while she tries to collect the papers. But the moment the person on the other side of the line starts talking, she freezes.

"Oh fuck, I'm so sorry. I completely lost track of time." Her voice is higher than normal, and she sounds mad at herself.

Reid looks at his watch. It's not that late, but they should have left for the weekend already. And clearly, Marisol was meant to be somewhere. She's still apologizing when she deposits the gathered paper on her desk and begins to haphazardly stack it.

"I can be there in thirty minutes. I'm so sorry, Monique. We have this new deadline and—" She stops talking. The voice interrupting her on the other end of the line sounds angry.

Right, he can no longer watch this. Marisol's eyes first spark with confusion and then soften with relief when he tries to convey through gestures that she can go, he's going to take care of this. If he's going to leave as well, it won't add much time to tidy up her desk a bit.

She mouths "thank you" before she grabs her bag and flees.

It leaves him in silence, wondering what exactly just happened. Careful to not cut himself, he puts the printouts on Marisol's desk in neat stacks—on top of them a sticky note telling her he didn't sort them. Looking back at his own desk, he's a bit discouraged. Somehow, he'd thought he'd be able to get through the emails.

Sullenly, Reid stuffs the printouts into his satchel. There are no plans for this weekend beyond doing the grocery shopping. He can take his work home with him for once. Only once, though, he reminds himself. This can't become a habit. That way lies trouble.

Of course, Reid should have expected that his sister would check in on him after the week he had. Briana stops by onSaturday afternoon, once Reid has stored all his fresh produce and made himself a nice lunch. She just waltzes in and plops herself down on his couch, demanding a full account of his week and specifically the trip to Chesterton.

She doesn't stay for too long. Reid is probably projecting his anxiety for her to leave so he can get to work and have the Sunday for relaxation. It makes him feel guilty because heisthankful that she's checking up on him. And she isn't even being pushy. But he feels protective of the information that Everett divulged to him, so his answers are evasive.ThisBriana seems worried about.

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