Chapter 23 - LEO BECOMES A JOURNALIST
Leo did not become a doctor.
He did not become a detective.
He studied journalism.
“Of course,” Sarah said when she heard.
I smiled.
He specialized in local government and public contracts.
Not because every career had to emerge from trauma.
Because he liked documents and hated euphemisms.
His first major investigation involved school-bus maintenance.
No connection to Greg.
He found falsified inspection logs.
The district fixed them.
No awards.
No dramatic conspiracy.
He called Rebecca afterward.
“Apparently paperwork can be bad without bugs.”
“Growth,” she said.
Leo disclosed his family history whenever reporting on county remediation rules or corruption created a conflict.
Sometimes editors reassigned him.
He hated that.
Then understood it.
Independence protected his work from becoming memoir disguised as reporting.
At twenty-six, he wrote a long piece about how children’s statements enter medical records.
He did not center himself.
He interviewed pediatricians, abuse specialists, parents of medically complex children, former foster youth, and health-information researchers.
One paragraph said:
A caregiver can be both essential historian and source of distortion. Systems fail when they treat either possibility as universally true.
I emailed him:
Good sentence.
He replied:
You said it first.
May you like
I answered:
No. You made it better.
