27. Avery #2
I use my lunch break to call the furniture store.
The deposit on the crib came from my first Bell & Rourke paycheck in November.
The rest has waited in a separate account, growing with every week I worked while Declan’s restitution remained untouched inside the marital estate.
When the clerk confirms the exact model is available, I pay the balance from my wages and arrange delivery to the rental.
The crib will arrive boxed. It stays in the box today, and the man who once built every shelf in our house has no standing to assemble this one merely because his child will sleep in it.
The clerk asks whether I want the receipt sent to a second parent.
My answer catches behind my teeth. The answer itself is easy.
What snags is the memory of a time when every purchase went to the same inbox and Declan would complain that I had chosen the expensive crib before assembling it exactly the way I wanted.
“Only me,” I say, then verify my address and save the receipt in the nursery folder.
The confirmation page loads with one name on it.
I don’t know whether I’m carrying a girl or a boy.
The crib works for either, and I refuse to use the baby’s sex to measure how much of Declan belongs in the nursery.
June answers the picture I send with three messages, the first celebrating the crib, the second offering to bring a drill, and the third admitting she doesn’t own a drill.
I tell her to bring food and stay away from the screws.
Her reply contains an insult and an offer to label every piece, which is why she remains invited.
That afternoon, Nadia sends me to the county records office for a certified copy of a contractor lien unrelated to East Parish.
I finish the firm errand first, seal the copy in the envelope the clerk provides, and use my own time at the public terminal after I clock out.
Sasha’s handler is in custody. Her rural property is compromised.
The house, the club garage, and the clubhouse remain watched.
The visible car came off my building in February, when the threat began feeling historical to everybody except me.
A woman who plans ahead as carefully as Sasha doesn’t wait inside a vehicle with one rifle and hope rage invents the next move for her.
East Parish Holdings appears in the county entries I’ve already read.
I search the registered agent, the misspelled Parrish variation, the notary, and the mailing address.
A new result appears: a petition filed by Parish Building Services to release a maintenance van from a mechanic’s lien.
The company formed after the failed rural-property trap.
Its registered agent uses the same post-office box as East Parish Holdings, and the attached invoice names the same notary I caught in November.
I almost think of the notary as something we found, then correct myself. I found her. I found the notary in November. My name belongs in that sentence even when the only audience is me.
The invoice lists the van’s make, color, vehicle number, and Indiana commercial plate.
White cargo van, no permanent logo, magnetic signs billed separately.
The mechanic photographed it from all four sides before storage.
A long scrape marks the rear passenger door, and a black ladder rack runs above the roof.
Ordinary enough to sit behind an office, clinic, house, or courthouse and read as furniture.
The petition says the company paid the bill in cash and retrieved the van three days ago.
That’s the fact that makes me stop treating the filing like another historical link.
Sasha kept the vehicle. Somebody created a company, repaired a van, and put it back on the road while the club watched her old routes.
The filing gives me no address beyond the post-office box, but it proves her next move has wheels and a reason to pass as harmless.
I save the docket page to the evidence account, print the petition and every exhibit, ask the clerk for a certified copy, and photograph the receipt beside the terminal number. Then I start one group message with Cruz and Declan, copied to Marisol, so neither man can claim the other received more.
New shell company tied to East Parish. Parish Building Services. White maintenance van, black ladder rack, scraped rear passenger door. Plate and photographs attached. Filing is recent. I can’t connect it to a current property. Don’t move until Cruz verifies.
Cruz answers first. Received. Gage checks the plate. Existing plan remains.
Declan’s reply appears while I’m placing the certified pages into my bag. Received. I won’t run it. Tell me if the plan changes.
The thread stays the whole of the conversation.
Whatever leaves the clubhouse tonight leaves on Cruz’s word, and Declan sees the same danger I do.
The group message is less dramatic than the tracker he once hid under my car on an account in another man’s name.
It also gives Sasha fewer gaps to crawl through.
At home, the crib receipt waits beside my signed employment letter while I prepare for court.
June steams the charcoal suit I bought for work and hangs it on the bedroom door.
I place the divorce file in my bag, check the hearing notice, then check it again even though I’ve known the date since Declan read the letter.
The old marriage ends tomorrow if neither of us asks the judge to save it.
I don’t want it saved. Wanting Declan to become the man who wrote that letter has never required me to preserve the marriage he betrayed before he learned to read it aloud.
Sleep comes in pieces. Before dawn, I dress in the charcoal suit, trade the heels June chose for boots that won’t punish my swollen feet, and eat toast over the sink while she starts the car.
The county patrol sends its routine all-clear from the marital road at three forty.
Gage confirms Declan is headed to the courthouse with Mia and hasn’t asked for a route change.
I lock my door, place the employment letter and crib receipt in the desk drawer, and leave with only the divorce file.
June drives. The courthouse lies beyond the turn for the marital house, close enough that I’ll pass the road without seeing the roof.
I’ve done that on purpose since October.
This morning, a white county truck races through the intersection ahead of us, lights flashing, and June’s hand closes around the steering wheel before either of us hears the siren behind it.
Smoke rises above the bare trees along the road leading to the house, black enough to swallow the paling sky, and the phone inside my court bag begins ringing as June turns toward the home I’m supposed to lose in front of a judge today.