Chapter 4: Neptune's Empty Office

The N. Nakamura file had thirty-seven pages of maritime risk analysis, two quarterly derivatives summaries, and one index sheet that listed seventeen additional documents under a tab labeled SUPPLEMENTAL — RESTRICTED ACCESS, DIVISION LEAD AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.

I had been staring at the restricted tab for forty minutes.

The thing about ADHD is that everyone imagines it as chaos — the person who can't focus, who gets distracted by everything, who bounces off walls and forgets their own name. The actual experience, at least mine, is closer to the opposite problem: I focus on everything, simultaneously, at a volume that makes it difficult to decide which signal to follow. Right now I had approximately eleven signals. The restricted tab was one of them. The salt smell was another. The fact that Griffin's lunch break had ended twelve minutes ago and he hadn't texted was a third. The photograph I hadn't yet seen but somehow already knew existed was so loud it was nearly white noise.