Chương 10
“You think I’m using Lily.”
“I think you are a frightened father whose wife betrayed him and endangered his child. I think those facts make perfect clarity unlikely.”
Nathan hated good attorneys for the same reason he hated good detectives.
They rarely gave him enemies simple enough to fight.
The court approved professionally supervised visits once a week, subject to Lily’s therapist’s recommendations.
The first visit lasted twelve minutes.
Lily came out holding the same red coat she had worn beneath the playset.
She no longer wore it.
She carried it sometimes.
Nathan had stopped asking why.
Rebecca left through another exit.
Nathan did not see her.
In the car, he waited.
Lily buckled her seat belt.
“How was it?”
She shrugged.
He immediately regretted asking.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“She cried.”
Nathan gripped the steering wheel.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay.”
“She said she was sorry.”
Nathan looked straight ahead.
Lily continued.
“She said she made a terrible mistake.”
He swallowed.
“Okay.”
“I asked which one.”
Nathan looked at her.
Lily’s face was serious.
“What did she say?”
“She said all of it.”
Nathan did not know whether that was remorse or strategy.
He did not ask Lily to decide.
On the way home they stopped for ice cream.
Lily chose strawberry.
Nathan ordered coffee.
She looked at him.
“That’s not ice cream.”
“It’s frozen.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Strong opinion.”
“I’ve tasted yours.”
“You stole mine.”
“I was checking.”
“Scientific process?”
“Yes.”
He smiled.
For seven minutes they discussed whether coffee ice cream should legally qualify as ice cream.
Nothing important happened.
Nathan remembered those seven minutes for years.
The criminal case changed again in November.
The prosecution obtained evidence that Rebecca had purchased the exterior latch herself two weeks before Nathan returned.
A hardware-store loyalty account recorded the transaction.
Video no longer existed.
The receipt did.
More importantly, investigators found a text to a handyman who had done work at the house.
Need a simple latch on old crawlspace panel so Lily can’t open it. Safety issue.
The handyman replied that he could come the following week.
Rebecca wrote:
Never mind. I can handle it.
The latch was installed afterward.
Rebecca’s defense attorney argued that installing a safety latch was not evidence of unlawful confinement.
He was correct.
Then prosecutors found a photograph on Rebecca’s phone taken the afternoon before Lily was trapped.
It showed the hatch.
The latch was visible.
Why she had taken the photograph was unclear.
The metadata put her in the backyard.
The photo itself proved little.
Together with Lily’s account, the message to Vale, the packed luggage, the withheld tablet, and Rebecca’s shifting statements, it mattered.
The Commonwealth added a felony abduction charge involving a minor.
Nathan sat in Karen’s office when she explained the filing.
He felt no victory.
“What happens if she’s convicted?”
“Sentencing depends on the final charges, findings, guidelines, and judge.”
“How long?”
“I’m not going to give you a number from the air.”
“I need to know.”
“No. You want to know.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One can be answered today.”
Nathan stood and walked to the window.
Traffic moved below.
A delivery truck blocked half an intersection while someone honked continuously.
“What am I supposed to tell Lily?”
“That the case is still happening.”
“She asks whether her mother is going to prison.”
“Then tell her you don’t know.”
“I’m tired of saying I don’t know.”
Karen nodded.
“Lily is probably more tired of adults pretending they do.”
Nathan looked at her.
“You and Bennett rehearse these lines?”
“Different divorce.”
Nathan laughed despite himself.
Then he stopped.
“Everybody in this county is divorced.”
“Occupational hazard.”
By December, Nathan had begun the process of retiring.
He told himself it was for Lily.
That was mostly true.
It was also because the cockpit no longer felt like refuge.
The first time he returned to a simulator, an instructor announced an engine failure.
Nathan’s hands performed correctly.
His mind went somewhere else.
A red coat in a dark hole.
A kitchen going black.
A seven-year-old saying your plane was supposed to crash.
He finished the session.
Then he sat alone in the locker room for twenty minutes.
Marcus Avery found him there.
“You passed.”
“I know.”
“You look like you failed.”
Nathan untied one boot.
“I’m retiring.”
Avery did not look surprised.
“That quick?”
“No.”
Nathan removed the second boot.
“I’ve been leaving for years. I just kept calling it service.”
Avery sat on the opposite bench.
“Careful.”
“What?”
“Don’t rewrite your entire life because one part blew up.”
Nathan looked at him.
“I missed things.”
“So did I.”
“My daughter needed me.”
“You think retiring means she’ll never need you when you’re somewhere else?”
“No.”
“You think being home means you’ll notice everything?”
Nathan said nothing.
Avery leaned forward.
“You’re good at turning guilt into tasks. Retirement. Custody. Therapy schedules. School pickup. Fixing the house. None of those are bad.”
“But?”
“But your daughter doesn’t need you to become a surveillance system.”
Nathan stared at the floor.
Avery stood.
“Take the retirement if it’s right. Just don’t make Lily responsible for ending the career you loved.”
Nathan watched him leave.
That night he asked Lily whether she wanted him to stop flying.
She looked up from homework.
“Forever?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“To be home.”
She frowned.
“You hate being home.”
Nathan blinked.
“What?”
“You always walk around looking for stuff to fix.”
“That means I hate being home?”
“Uncle Daniel says you don’t know how to sit down.”
Nathan made a note to have a conversation with Daniel.
Lily erased a math problem.
“Are you quitting because of me?”
There it was.
The exact thing Avery had warned him about.
Nathan sat across from her.
“No.”
She gave him a look he recognized from Rebecca.
He corrected himself.
“Not only because of you.”
“Why else?”
“Because I’ve done it a long time.”
“Do you still like it?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s dumb.”
May you like
“You’re saying that a lot lately.”
“There’s a lot of dumb stuff.”
