Part 13
“Perhaps.”
“Howard’s grants will stop. The staff will lose their jobs. The house will be sold.”
“It may.”
“You are willing to do that now?”
Daniel looked at the sleeve in his hand.
“No,” he said. “I am not willing.”
Claire stared at him.
Veronica’s shoulders lowered a fraction.
Daniel continued.
“But I am going to.”
The difference seemed small in language. It did not feel small.
He handed Claire her phone.
“Try again.”
She dialed.
This time the call connected.
Claire gave the address. Her voice shook only when she described the flare discharge. She repeated that no one had a visible gunshot wound, that the launcher was secured, and that the woman who fired it remained present.
She listened.
“They’re sending officers and medical response,” she said.
“How long?” Daniel asked.
Claire repeated the question.
“Twenty-five minutes.”
Veronica looked toward the lake path.
Daniel saw it.
“Do not run.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“You cannot know what I was thinking.”
“No. But I know what you looked at.”
A siren sounded faintly across the water.
For one hopeful second, Ruth turned toward it.
The sound faded along the county highway on the opposite shore.
They went back inside.
Daniel placed the acknowledgment and amendment in the document box. He locked it and kept the key in his pocket. Claire photographed every page first, including Ruth’s torn note and Howard’s message from the brass tube. She sent the images to her own email, to Daniel, and to an address belonging to the foundation’s general counsel.
“Did it go?” Daniel asked.
“The messages are pending.”
“Keep the phone near the window.”
“I know.”
He almost said, I know you know.
Instead he nodded.
Ruth found a dustpan and began gathering fragments of the vase.
“Leave them,” Daniel said.
She kept sweeping.
“They are evidence.”
“The large pieces are evidence. The dust is dirt.”
“Ruth.”
She looked at him.
Daniel stopped.
Ruth swept the dust into the pan.
Veronica sat on the white couch. Her robe had fallen open enough to reveal the dark green evening dress beneath. A tear near the hem showed where the fabric had caught on something. She removed one gold shoe and examined the blister on her heel.
Claire returned with the first-aid kit.
Daniel watched her kneel beside Veronica.
“No,” he said.
Claire looked over her shoulder. “She needs a bandage.”
“She can put it on herself.”
“I can,” Veronica said.
Claire gave her the bandage rather than applying it.
Veronica peeled back the paper tabs. Her fingers trembled. The adhesive folded onto itself. Claire took another bandage from the kit and set it beside her.
Neither woman spoke.
Daniel sat in the armchair near the windows. The pain in his shoulder had deepened into a steady throb. He rotated it carefully.
Ruth noticed.
“You were struck.”
“By a piece of ceramic.”
“Let me see.”
“It’s fine.”
Ruth’s mouth tightened.
Daniel removed his jacket.
A dark bruise had begun to spread beneath his shirt near the shoulder. The skin was unbroken. Ruth pressed her fingers around it with professional firmness.
“You will be stiff tomorrow.”
“I’m stiff every morning.”
“No. You complain every morning. That is different.”
Claire let out a short laugh before covering it with her hand.
Daniel looked at her.
She looked away, but the corner of her mouth remained lifted.
The moment vanished as quickly as it came.
Veronica finished applying the bandage.
“I did not mean to hit you,” she said.
Daniel put his jacket back on.
“You fired a flare.”
“I know.”
“Then stop asking intent to carry more weight than action.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You were.”
Veronica looked toward the broken glass doors leading to the kitchen.
“I thought the tube would survive. I thought the vase would split. I thought you would move.”
“And if I had not?”
She did not answer.
Claire sat on the floor near the coffee table, keeping her phone elevated for a signal.
Ruth lowered herself onto the couch’s far end.
The four of them waited.
The house made ordinary sounds around them. Pipes clicked. Wind pressed against the terrace doors. A branch scraped the west-wing windows with a slow rhythm. From the kitchen came the faint smell of smoke and the sharper scent of antiseptic.
Daniel watched the pending messages change to sent.
He told Claire.
She nodded.
“You should send the photographs somewhere else,” Veronica said.
Claire looked at her.
“The foundation attorney may represent the trustees, not the truth.”
“Who would you suggest?”
“No one I know.”
“That is reassuring.”
“I knew an attorney once who would have helped.”
“Why won’t she now?”
Veronica’s eyes lowered. “I stopped paying her.”
Claire sent the images to a newly created cloud folder and shared the link with Daniel and Ruth.
Ruth stared at the notification on her old phone.
“I do not know what this means.”
“It means you have a copy.”
“I do not want a copy.”
“You kept the original for six months.”
“That is why I do not want another.”
Claire sat beside her and showed her how to open the folder.
Daniel watched them. Ruth held the phone too close to her face. Claire gently lowered it.
Veronica leaned back against the couch.
“Howard would hate this,” she said.
“The police?” Daniel asked.
“The cloud folder.”
Ruth almost smiled.
Howard had refused online document storage because he believed it encouraged people to stop remembering where things belonged. He kept handwritten lists in three rooms and then accused others of moving them.
Daniel looked at the brass tube on the coffee table.
“He trusted a vase,” Claire said.
“He trusted theater,” Veronica replied. “The vase was theater.”
“So was the amendment,” Daniel said.
She looked at him. “You think giving me a place to live was theater?”
“I think hiding conditions, splitting documents, and assigning Ruth as keeper of everyone’s conscience was theater.”
“He was afraid.”
“Of what?”
May you like
“That after he died, you would erase me.”
Daniel did not answer.
