Part 13
“You’re not ready to speak to Theo.”
“You mean I’m not willing to recite the confession you have written for me.”
“I haven’t written one.”
“But Nora has.”
“No. She took responsibility without blaming you.”
That silenced Eleanor longer than anything else had.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter.
“She always knew how to make remorse attractive.”
Graham ended the call.
The second meeting with Nora went worse.
Theo arrived angry because Graham had refused to let him skip a school project. Nora tried to help him assemble a cardboard model of a colonial mill, and he accused her of cutting the roof incorrectly. When she apologized, he said she apologized too much. When she stopped apologizing, he said she did not care.
Nora’s face flushed.
Graham saw exhaustion and frustration move through her before she contained them.
“You’re mad at me,” Theo said.
“A little.”
“You said I could be mad.”
“You can.”
“But you’re mad back.”
“I’m a person, Theo.”
The boy stared.
Nora set down the scissors.
“I’m not going to leave because I’m frustrated,” she said. “But I might need a minute so I don’t say something unfair.”
Theo turned to Graham.
“Is that allowed?”
“Yes.”
Nora walked to the water cooler, filled a paper cup, and stood with her back to them while she drank.
Theo crushed the corner of the cardboard roof.
“She doesn’t like me.”
Graham crouched beside him.
“She dislikes what is happening right now. That isn’t the same thing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I dislike what is happening right now, and I love you.”
Theo looked offended.
Nora laughed from across the room, then covered her mouth.
The sound broke the tension. Theo began laughing too, though he tried not to.
Later, Dr. Levin called the moment important.
“He tested whether anger makes her disappear,” she said.
“And she nearly lost her temper.”
“That may have made the result more believable.”
Graham frowned.
“I’m paying you to tell me imperfection is therapeutic.”
“Not all imperfection. Honest, contained imperfection.”
The visits continued.
Nora came every other weekend because weekly travel became too expensive and interfered with work. On alternate Sundays, she and Theo spoke by video. Sometimes the calls lasted half an hour. Sometimes Theo ended them after four minutes because he wanted to play a game.
Nora did not complain to him.
She complained to Graham.
“He hung up because someone came to the door.”
“He’s eight.”
“I know how old he is.”
“You sound surprised every time he behaves like it.”
“I missed the years when I could have learned.”
“That isn’t his fault.”
“I know.”
Their conversations remained tense, but the tension changed. They argued about schedules, sugar, bedtime, and whether Theo should be allowed to bring the rabbit to school. These were smaller disputes, and therefore more intimate. They sounded less like two people discussing a crisis and more like parents who disliked each other’s methods.
In February, the independent evaluator completed her assessment.
She found Nora stable, engaged in treatment, employed, and realistic about the slow process of rebuilding. She also noted that Nora remained vulnerable to shame and avoidance under conflict. Continued monitoring was recommended, along with gradually increasing contact if Theo remained comfortable.
Graham read the report twice.
Nora called afterward.
“You sound disappointed,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“You wanted a perfect report.”
“I wanted certainty.”
“That doesn’t exist.”
“I’m aware.”
“No, you say you’re aware. Then you build a new system and hope certainty lives inside it.”
Graham looked at the folders spread across his desk.
“You were always good at criticizing systems after other people built them.”
“And you were always good at building cages with comfortable furniture.”
He almost ended the call.
Instead, he said, “She recommended an unsupervised afternoon.”
“I read it.”
“Are you ready?”
Nora hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty surprised him.
“What are you afraid of?”
“That he’ll ask something I answer badly. That he’ll get hurt. That I’ll look at him and feel everything at once.”
“You’ve done that already.”
“With you and Dr. Levin there.”
“You said you wanted more time.”
“I do.”
“Then take the afternoon.”
“What if I fail?”
Graham looked through the office window. Theo was outside attempting to build a snow fort with Maria’s teenage son. One wall had already collapsed.
“Then we deal with what actually happens,” he said. “Not every terrible thing that could.”
Nora was quiet.
“That sounded like someone else,” she said.
“I’m trying.”
The first unsupervised visit lasted three hours.
Nora took Theo to a science museum in Poughkeepsie. Graham remained nearby at a bookstore, checking his phone every few minutes. Nora sent one message when they arrived and another after lunch. The second included a photograph of Theo standing beside a model mastodon, making a solemn face.
Graham enlarged the image.
He searched the background for danger before noticing his own behavior.
At two thirty, Nora called.
His heart accelerated.
“He’s fine,” she said immediately. “He wants to buy a fossil kit that costs forty-eight dollars.”
“No.”
“I told him no.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“He said you would say yes.”
“He lied.”
“I assumed.”
In the background, Theo shouted, “I didn’t lie. I guessed.”
Graham laughed.
At pickup, Theo carried a postcard and a small plastic shark from the gift shop.
“I thought you were looking at fossils,” Graham said.
“The shark was six dollars.”
Nora lifted both hands.
“I lost that battle.”
Theo climbed into the car.
Before closing the door, he turned.
“Can she come to the estate next time?”
Nora and Graham looked at each other.
The estate remained the place where Nora had become ill, where Eleanor had erased her letters, and where Theo’s memories of family had been shaped around absence. Graham had avoided bringing Nora there because neutrality felt safer.
But neutrality also kept the reconstruction separate from Theo’s real life.
“We’ll discuss it,” Graham said.
Theo groaned.
May you like
“That means no.”
“It means not today.”
