Season Two · Part One · Episode 8 of 24
Jason stops carrying it alone. Part One ends.
Jason went to Renee’s office before he let himself think better of it, which was, he understood even as he was doing it, the only way he was going to do it at all.
She looked up from her screen without much surprise, as though she’d been expecting him for longer than the two days since the compensation committee meeting.
“Close the door,” Jason said, and then, hearing himself, almost smiled. It was the same request Kevin had made of Anna, three floors down, a version of the same sentence being spoken all over the building lately by people who’d finally decided to say it out loud.
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“Show me what you and Margaret have,” Jason said. “All of it, not the version you gave me in the meeting.”
Renee studied him for a moment, the way she studied a witness, deciding whether to answer the question actually asked or the safer one nearby. Then she pulled the folder from her drawer and turned it on the desk, the way she had for Margaret three weeks earlier.
Nine names. Then fourteen years of names. Then the pattern beneath both lists, laid out the way only Renee could lay it out: without heat, without accusation, in a voice built for rooms that needed the truth to survive contact with people who didn’t want to hear it.
Jason listened the way he’d learned to listen since Marcus’s party, which was different from how he used to. He didn’t look for the exception that would let him set the finding aside. He looked for what it would cost the firm if he didn’t.
“You’re telling me it’s not just that relationships don’t transfer,” he said at last. “You’re telling me that when they do, they transfer to whoever happened to remind the partner of himself.”
“I’m telling you that’s been the whole system,” Renee said. “Quietly, for longer than either of us has been paying attention.”
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He told her about his own spreadsheet then, the one with no name in the file system beyond a date. He hadn’t planned to. It came out anyway. She’d put her own numbers on the table, and keeping his felt like cowardice.
Fourteen point one million dollars. Eighteen blank rows out of twenty-two. Renee didn’t look surprised by the number so much as relieved that someone else finally had one.
“So we have three problems that are actually one problem,” Jason said. “What happened to Marcus. What’s about to happen to me if nothing changes. And whatever’s been happening quietly to everyone who was never in a position to be somebody’s Marcus in the first place, because nobody ever brought them along.”
“That’s the version I’d take to the full partnership if you’re ready to take it there,” Renee said.
“I’m not sure I know how to fix any of it,” Jason said.
“No,” Renee agreed. “But I know someone who does this for a living. You’ve met her.”
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Susan answered on the second ring.
“It’s been a while,” she said. “How’s the newest cohort?”
“Doing well, I’m told. That’s not why I’m calling.” He paused, aware this was the part of the sentence he’d been circling for three weeks. “Marcus Webb retired last month. It cost us close to three million dollars in billings that didn’t transfer, and I’ve since learned it wasn’t an isolated failure. I built my own number. Fourteen million, sitting entirely with me, with almost no one positioned to inherit any of it if I stepped back tomorrow. Renee’s been finding something related from a completely different angle, about who gets brought along and who doesn’t.”
There was a pause on the line, the kind Jason remembered from eighteen months ago, the sound of Susan deciding which question would actually move things forward rather than merely sound thoughtful.
“We built MLARD to fix retention,” Susan said. “What you’re describing isn’t retention. It’s succession, and it’s not just yours. It’s the firm’s.”
“That’s what I think too,” Jason said. “I don’t know what the answer looks like.”
“I don’t either, not yet,” Susan said. “But I know where I’d start. Whose name is on your biggest relationship, besides yours?”
Jason didn’t answer right away because he already knew, and saying it out loud felt like the real beginning of something he couldn’t take back.
“No one’s,” he said.
“Then that’s where we start,” Susan said.
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End of Part One
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