Chương 11
Camille shrugged. “It has a separate entrance. Security in the building. No connection to Hart Properties. Sophie stays with me half the week, so the children could see each other without press.”
Nora’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because an eight-year-old should not have his address posted online.”
“That is not your responsibility.”
“No. It is an available room.”
Daniel watched the two women. Camille had never been warm to strangers, but she trusted practical kindness more than emotional declarations.
Nora said, “I don’t want charity.”
Camille nodded. “Pay the utilities.”
“With what?”
“Then owe me until your case is resolved. I am comfortable being disliked.”
Sophie, waiting outside, later told Eli that their mothers had argued for forty minutes and somehow become “not friends but maybe allies.”
Nora moved into the guest apartment.
The arrangement was awkward in ways no one could solve with money. Nora disliked the refrigerator’s digital screen and unplugged it, causing the freezer to thaw. Camille objected when Nora let Eli sleep on the sofa after nightmares instead of returning him to bed. Nora accused Camille of speaking to Eli like a patient. Camille accused Nora of treating every question like an interrogation.
Daniel was permitted three visits a week.
He learned that Eli hated eggs but ate them without complaint if they were scrambled dry. He read far above grade level and struggled with multiplication because Nora had moved too often to maintain consistent lessons. He collected transit maps from every city they had lived in. He could identify adults who were lying but often mistook uncertainty for dishonesty.
Sophie showed him how to play a building game on her tablet. He deleted her favorite house by accident. She cried, then told him she hated him. He disappeared into the bathroom for twenty minutes.
Daniel found him sitting on the closed toilet lid.
“She said it was an accident,” Daniel said.
“She said she hated me.”
“She says that to me twice a month.”
“You’re her dad.”
“That does not seem to protect me.”
Eli picked at the frayed cuff of his shirt. Nora had bought him new clothes, but he still wore the gray henley on difficult days.
“Do I have to like her?”
“No.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Even when she hates you?”
“Especially then. She usually says it when she is afraid I have stopped liking her.”
Eli looked unconvinced.
Daniel sat on the edge of the bathtub.
“When I was eight, I broke a model boat my father kept in his office. He didn’t speak to me for a week.”
“Because of a toy?”
“It had belonged to his father.”
“Did you say sorry?”
“Many times.”
“Did he forgive you?”
“He said he did. Then he mentioned it every Christmas.”
Eli gave him a sideways look. “That’s weird.”
“Yes.”
“Mom says dead people don’t become good just because they’re dead.”
“Your mother has many useful opinions.”
“She has opinions about everything.”
Daniel smiled.
Eli’s expression softened. “Sophie had been working on the house for a long time.”
“Then we help her rebuild it.”
“She won’t want me to.”
“We ask.”
They returned to the living room. Sophie sat with her arms folded, the tablet dark beside her.
Eli stopped several feet away.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sophie looked at him.
“I can help make another one. But I don’t know how to do the roof.”
“I do,” she said.
He sat beside her.
Daniel stayed near the doorway until Camille came up behind him.
“You look pleased with yourself,” she said.
“I did nothing.”
“That may be why it worked.”
The first recovered Penfield ledger page arrived six weeks after the flood.
It listed twelve relocation payments, each approved under Nora’s credentials. Beside four names were handwritten initials: L.R.
Rourke’s attorneys argued the initials could belong to anyone.
A second page showed a wire transfer to the shell company that had paid Nora the fifty thousand dollars. The authorization bore two signatures. One belonged to Silas Hart. The other appeared to be Rourke’s.
The prosecutor agreed to reopen the financial analysis but refused to dismiss Nora’s charges based on incomplete records. The state also discovered that the fifty thousand had passed through an account Nora controlled, strengthening the appearance that she had participated.
Public sympathy shifted again.
A headline called her THE THIEF WHO CAME BACK FOR A BILLIONAIRE.
Someone spray-painted LIAR across the entrance of Camille’s building.
Nora packed two bags before Daniel arrived.
“You cannot run,” he said.
“Watch me.”
“The monitor will alert the court.”
“I know how to cut it.”
Eli stood in the hallway, listening.
Daniel lowered his voice. “And then what? Another motel? Another name? He loses school again?”
“Do not use my son to corner me.”
“Our son.”
Nora slapped him.
The sound startled all three of them.
She stared at her hand.
Daniel’s cheek burned. He did not move.
Eli stepped between them.
“Stop,” he said.
Nora backed away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Eli’s face had gone blank. “You said we were done running.”
“We are.”
“You packed.”
“I was scared.”
“You said being scared isn’t the same as leaving.”
Nora sat on the arm of the sofa. Her hands shook.
Daniel wanted to reach for Eli. He did not know whether he had earned that movement.
The boy looked at him.
“Are you going to call the police?”
“No.”
“She hit you.”
“Yes.”
“You said people get consequences.”
“They do.”
“What’s hers?”
Nora covered her mouth.
Daniel crouched to Eli’s height. “She has to acknowledge what she did. She has to make sure it does not happen again. And I decide whether I feel safe staying in the room.”
“Do you?”
Daniel looked at Nora.
“Yes.”
May you like
Eli’s shoulders lowered slightly.
Nora unzipped the bags and unpacked them while the children watched. It was not a grand act. She folded shirts badly because her hands would not steady. Camille came home halfway through and asked no questions until Eli and Sophie were upstairs.
