Silas returned two days later carrying a manila envelope and asking to see Nathan. He was still wearing the brown coat. Nathan met him at a community library rather than the diner. Silas apologized for the trouble, but Nathan said Victor was responsible for the assault, not the person who needed a meal. Silas explained that he had been an industrial safety inspector for a regional food distributor before an injury, unstable housing and an unresolved claim pushed him into poverty. His envelope contained photographs of a warehouse loading dock and a list of incidents filed years earlier. One photograph showed Victor, much younger, signing an inspection checklist.
The first photograph showed the loading dock on a bright morning, long before either man had entered Delaney's Grill. A yellow freight lift stood beside stacked pallets. Someone had circled the safety latch with a ballpoint pen. Nathan could see a younger Victor in the background, his hair dark, his posture unmistakably rigid. Silas identified the date and admitted that some details were harder to remember than others. He remembered the sound of the machinery more clearly than the hour. Back then Silas had rented a small apartment and owned a reliable pickup. He inspected loading systems for several employers and considered himself lucky to work at a job that rewarded precision. A contract ended abruptly after the accident. His leg healed badly, and paperwork delays left him without regular income. He took smaller assignments until the pain made driving difficult. Then he lost his apartment and began sleeping in temporary rooms, shelters and, occasionally, outside. The story contained no single catastrophic decision. It was a slow accumulation of missed paychecks, medical bills and doors that closed at exactly the wrong time. Nathan asked about family. Silas had a sister in Indiana who believed he was still working. He had stopped answering her calls because he could not bear to describe his life. He knew this was unfair to her but felt trapped by the shame. Nathan did not lecture him. He asked whether Silas wanted contact information for the legal aid program Miriam had once used. Silas was willing to try, provided nobody demanded he tell his story in front of an audience. The photographs made Nathan uneasy because they showed Victor before the diner, when he had been someone else's subordinate. The manager's cruelty now seemed connected to a longer history of fear and bad choices, though nothing explained away the shove. Nathan insisted they keep the two incidents distinct. If Victor was responsible for the warehouse accident, the evidence would need to establish it. Silas nodded.
Nathan did not understand why the same manager appeared in another workplace's records.