Chapter 5: The Drive
Nora's room was on the third floor of the DeLuca estate — a small space at the end of the service corridor with a single window that faced the garden.
She had made it her own in small ways: a photograph of Claire taped to the inside of the wardrobe door, Lily's drawings pinned above the narrow desk, a paperback novel with a broken spine on the nightstand.
She retrieved the drive from inside the novel's hollowed back cover.
Julian's driver took them back to the estate at two in the morning.
Lily slept across the back seat with her head in Nora's lap, still holding the stuffed rabbit.
Julian sat in the front and did not speak for the first twenty minutes.
Then he said, "She named her before she was born."
Nora looked out the window.
"She had a list.
Lily was at the top from the beginning."
"Did she know it was a girl?"
"No.
She just said Lily worked either way.
She said it was a name that sounded like something growing toward light."
Julian was quiet again.
When they reached the house, Nora settled Lily in her bed and came back downstairs to find Julian in the small sitting room off the kitchen — not the formal rooms, not the study, but the plain room with the worn sofa where the staff sometimes ate lunch.
He had poured two glasses of water.
He had not touched either of them.
Nora set the drive on the table between them.
Julian looked at it for a moment.
"I want to watch it.
But I think that's something I need to do alone."
"I know." Nora sat down.
"I've seen it once.
When Claire first sent it to me, before she d*ed.
I haven't watched it again."
"What does she say?"
Nora thought about the question carefully.
"She says she loves you.
She says she was afraid, but not of you — she wants Lily to understand that clearly.
She says she made choices she wishes she had made differently.
And she says—" Nora stopped.
"Tell me."
"She says that if something happened to her, she hoped Lily would find her way to you eventually.
She said she trusted that you would know what to do." Nora's voice was steady but her eyes were not.
"She said you were the most decent man she had ever known who didn't yet believe it about himself."
Julian picked up the drive.
He turned it over once in his hand.
"She was right about the not believing it part," he said.
"She was right about all of it."
He set the drive down again.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly."
"All right."
"Did you come into my house to expose me?
If you had found evidence that I had known — that I had ordered it — what would you have done?"
Nora did not hesitate.
"I would have taken Lily and gone to the police.
And then I would have burned everything you owned to the ground through every legal channel available to me."
Julian nodded slowly.
"Good."
"You're not angry."
"No.
That's exactly what you should have done." He leaned back.
"I didn't know, Nora.
I want you to believe that.
Not because I need you to think well of me, but because Claire deserves to have the truth of it said out loud."
Nora looked at him for a long moment.
"I believe you."
The house was very quiet around them.
The kitchen clock ticked.
Outside, the November wind moved through the garden.
"What happens now?" Nora asked.
"Thomas is being charged tonight.
The prosecutor is pulling the original accident report and the security footage you found.
There will be an investigation into my father's role as well.
I've instructed my attorney to cooperate fully." He paused.
"And Lily's trust — the million dollars Cassandra promised — I'm going to match it.
Two million, administered independently, untouchable until she's twenty-five."
Nora opened her mouth.
"Don't argue with me," Julian said quietly.
"She's my daughter.
I have four years to make up for that I didn't know I was losing."
Nora closed her mouth.
She pressed her hands together in her lap and looked at the table.
"She's going to want to know who you are," she finally said.
"She's four.
She'll ask questions I won't be able to answer for her."
"Then we answer them together." Julian stood.
"I'm not going to appear in her life as a stranger and disappear again.
I don't know what the right shape of this looks like yet.
But I know that much."
He picked up the drive and held it carefully, the way a person holds something they are not yet ready to open but are no longer willing to put down.
"Get some sleep," he said.
"Tomorrow is going to be a long day."
He was halfway to the door when Nora spoke.
"Julian."
He stopped.
"Claire used to say that the bravest thing a person could do was want something good and admit it out loud." She paused.
"I think she would have been glad it was you."
May you like
He didn't answer.
But his hand on the doorframe held for just a moment before he let go.
