Chapter 9: The Things That Came After
The kjdnapping claim was dismissed on a Thursday morning.
Dr.
Osei called Nathan while he was in the backyard watching Lily chase a bird across the grass with the focused, joyful determination of someone who had no intention of actually catching it.
"It's done," Dr.
Osei said.
"Dismissed with prejudice.
The judge noted the co-authority provisions were improperly invoked and flagged the filing for further review."
"Thank you," Nathan said.
"There's one more thing.
The DA's office moved quickly on Victoria's father.
He's been formally charged with filing a fraudulent legal instrument.
His attorney has already indicated he intends to cooperate with the broader investigation."
Nathan watched Lily stop running.
The bird had landed on the fence.
She stood very still, watching it, as if stillness might convince it to come closer.
"What does cooperation mean for the investigation?" Nathan asked.
"It means Margaret Voss is likely to be named before the end of the month."
Nathan said nothing.
"Nathan," Dr.
Osei said.
"It's a good outcome."
"I know," Nathan said.
"I know it is."
He hung up and stood in the backyard while the bird flew away and Lily turned around with an expression of profound philosophical disappointment.
"It left," she announced.
"Birds do that," Nathan said.
"Gerald doesn't leave," she said, holding up the rabbit.
"Gerald is very loyal."
She nodded, satisfied with this answer, and went back inside.
Nathan stayed outside for another moment.
He thought about his father — not the man on the recording, not the man who had stood in this house and frightened a twenty-three-year-old woman out of his son's life, but the man who had sat with him at this same fence when Nathan was eight years old and taught him the names of birds.
The man who had, in the end, tried to fix what he had broken.
Who had made a recording and put it in a safe and trusted that his son would find it when the time came.
It was not enough.
Nathan knew that.
It was also not nothing.
He went inside.
Grace was at the kitchen table with her laptop, working.
She had started working again two days ago — she was a medical translator, it turned out, something Nathan had not known about her, one of a hundred things he was still learning.
She looked up when he came in.
"Good news?" she asked.
"Dismissed," he said.
"And Victoria's father has been charged."
Grace closed her laptop slowly.
"Is it strange," she said, "that I don't feel like celebrating?"
"No," Nathan said.
"It just means you're tired."
"I've been tired for five years."
"I know." He sat down across from her.
"You can stop now."
She looked at him.
"It's not that simple," she said.
"I know it's not.
But you can start."
She looked at her closed laptop.
At the kitchen around her — the kitchen that had been a place of terror four days ago and was now, somehow, a place where her daughter ate eggs that were not the runny kind and explained things to a rabbit named Gerald.
"She asked me this morning if we could get a dog," Grace said.
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't know." She looked at Nathan.
"What do you think?"
Nathan considered this seriously.
"I think Gerald might have opinions about a dog," he said.
Grace laughed.
A real one, full and unguarded, the kind that changes a person's face entirely.
Nathan thought: *there she is.* The person who had existed before his father's attorneys had been in the room.
The person Lily had inherited her laugh from.
Three weeks later, Margaret Voss was formally named in the DA's investigation.
Her attorney released a statement saying she intended to cooperate fully.
The board accepted her resignation and appointed an interim replacement.
Nathan read the news on his phone on a Tuesday morning.
He set the phone face-down on his desk.
May you like
He didn't read the rest.
He didn't need to.
