Chương 8
Evan opened the door but did not invite her in immediately.
“I’m not going to argue,” she said.
“Then you can come in.”
Noah sat at the dining table building a small suspension bridge from wooden craft sticks. The loaner prosthesis stood beside his chair. Without it, the right leg of his sweatpants folded loosely beneath the knee.
He glanced at the bag.
“You brought the blue hoodie?”
“Yes.”
“The dark blue or fake blue?”
“The one you call dark blue even though it’s gray.”
“Good.”
Mara placed the bag near the stairs.
Evan returned to the kitchen, giving them privacy that was not quite privacy. Cabinet doors opened and closed more loudly than necessary.
Mara sat opposite Noah.
“Grant offered a settlement.”
The craft stick in his hand stopped.
“What kind?”
“He’ll withdraw his complaint against me. He’ll pay for the prosthetic repair and donate money to the foundation.”
“What does he get?”
Mara had hoped he might ask how much. Adults often did.
“He wants me to resign and sign an agreement.”
“What agreement?”
“That I won’t discuss what happened.”
Noah stared at the bridge.
“And you tell people he didn’t do it.”
“The wording is complicated.”
“That means yes.”
“No. It means lawyers use sentences that leave room around the truth.”
“That sounds worse.”
Evan leaned against the kitchen counter, drying the same plate for too long.
Mara said, “If I don’t sign, there may be a trial. You might be interviewed. People may keep talking about you online.”
“They already are.”
“It could become worse.”
“For who?”
“For all of us.”
Noah pressed the craft stick into a line of glue. Too much squeezed out and pooled over his thumb.
“You said my leg isn’t a sad story for adults to use.”
“I meant that.”
“You used me in your speech.”
Mara flinched.
At the gala, she had introduced Noah as the reason she understood the foundation’s mission. She had told the audience that mobility was not a gift given by donors but a right built through access, engineering, and respect. Noah had approved the speech. He had even corrected a sentence. Now that memory offered no protection.
“You agreed to that speech.”
“You asked me in the car.”
“You could have said no.”
“You were already wearing the green dress.”
Evan stopped drying the plate.
Noah wiped glue onto a paper towel.
“You looked happy. Everyone at the foundation was waiting. Saying no would have ruined it.”
Mara sat back.
She had asked. She had not made refusal easy.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I want him to say what he did.”
“He may never say it.”
“Then I want everyone else to know.”
“That means showing photographs of your prosthesis. It could mean letting police interview you. Maybe a deposition later.”
“Do I have to talk on television?”
“No.”
“Do I have to tell the whole ballroom story again and again?”
“We can try to limit it.”
“That means maybe.”
“Yes.”
Noah fitted another piece onto the bridge.
“Can I think?”
“Of course.”
He glanced at her. “Not just until Monday?”
Mara could not answer quickly enough.
Noah looked back down.
“That’s what I thought.”
On Saturday morning, Mara went to the foundation office to retrieve personal items under supervision.
The office occupied the third floor of a converted warehouse overlooking the river. Children’s artwork covered the hallway walls: racing wheelchairs, bright prosthetic feet, a purple dragon using crutches. Grant had once suggested replacing the drawings with professional photographs before donor tours.
Lydia waited outside Mara’s office with a cardboard box.
“You have thirty minutes.”
“Are you afraid I’ll steal the grant files?”
“I’m afraid of everything this week.”
Mara opened her office door.
Someone had removed the framed photograph of Noah from her desk and placed it face down in the top drawer. Her computer was gone. The plants on the windowsill had already begun to droop.
“Who turned the picture over?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone came in here.”
“Outside counsel collected devices and records.”
“And protected themselves from a ten-year-old’s face?”
Lydia picked up the watering can and poured too much into the nearest plant. Water spilled into the saucer.
“The board is divided,” she said.
“About whether Grant attacked a child?”
“About what can be proved.”
“Those are different questions.”
“Boards live inside the second one.”
Mara placed books into the box. One was a manual on pediatric gait training. Another was a paperback mystery she had been pretending to read for six months.
“Did Grant move Evan’s seat?”
Lydia’s hand tightened around the watering can.
“Why are you asking?”
“Because he told Evan I changed the seating chart.”
Lydia set down the can.
“The final chart came from Grant’s assistant.”
“You approved it.”
“I approved table assignments, not individual placements.”
“Was he trying to isolate us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he angry about the vote?”
Lydia shut the office door.
Two days before the gala, Mara had persuaded four board members to delay Grant’s NO EXCUSES campaign until a youth advisory panel reviewed it. The decision embarrassed him. He had expected automatic approval.
“He was furious,” Lydia said. “But furious is not evidence that he planned to hurt Noah.”
“Did he threaten me?”
“In an email, yes.”
“Did you tell the investigator?”
“I gave them the entire correspondence file.”
Mara looked at her.
“Grant offered me a settlement.”
Lydia’s expression revealed that she knew.
“He shouldn’t have involved the foundation donation.”
“He involved it because he knows I care what happens here.”
“He also knows the organization may not survive prolonged litigation.”
“So you want me to sign.”
“I want the equipment program funded.”
“At Noah’s expense.”
May you like
“At no child’s expense, if the statement is drafted carefully.”
Mara stared at the woman who had hired her six years earlier, when Noah still used a temporary prosthesis decorated with dinosaur stickers. Lydia had sat beside them on the clinic floor because Noah refused to climb onto the fitting platform. She had eaten stale crackers from the vending machine and told Mara the foundation needed someone impolite enough to change it.
