7. One Door Closes
Chapter seven
One Door Closes
The notebook sat in the passenger seat beside Lila, pages filled with names, dates, notes, and questions she’d spent weeks organizing.
She had been over the list so many times that she knew it all by heart.
The shape of the land deal, her father’s role in it, the cooperation agreement.
The pieces she could prove and the parts she couldn’t.
What she needed from Frank Forsythe was everything that lived between the lines—the things that never made it into the public records. She wanted to understand the nature of the threat that made disappearing preferable to anything else, and what happened to the Suncoast principals afterward.
She had arranged it in the order she intended to ask it. She had thought about how he might answer and what she would ask next, what she would not push on, and what she would. She was ready. Or as ready as she knew how to be.
Lila left Salt Flower Bay a little after seven-thirty.
The sun was barely above the horizon when she crossed the bridge out of town.
The Gulf flashed silver through gaps in the roadside palms before disappearing behind buildings and traffic lights.
By the time she reached the interstate the water was gone entirely and the drive settled into its familiar rhythm.
The landscape shifted from salt air and sea grapes to scrub pine and the occasional exit marked by clusters of gas stations and fast-food restaurants.
Florida inland was a different country from Florida on the water.
Lila drove with the radio off and every now and then her thoughts drifted back to the conversation she’d had with Forsythe on the phone. He sounded older than she had expected and he was careful with the words he chose.
I’ve thought, in recent years, that some things probably should have been handled differently.
He hadn’t said what things. He hadn’t said how. But he’d agreed to meet, which meant he had something to give or had decided he did. Either way she was going to be sitting across from him in a couple of hours, and she was going to find out what that was.
She stopped once for gas and coffee outside Bradenton. The station had a Subway attached to one side and smelled faintly of coffee and bread baked hours earlier. Ten minutes later she was back on the highway heading north.
By a quarter to ten she turned into a quiet residential neighborhood east of Tampa.
The houses here were older—ranch-type homes shaded by mature oaks that lined both sides of the wide streets.
The retirement facility sat at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Low brick buildings surrounded by the same live oaks.
A groundskeeper was working somewhere on the far side of the parking lot.
She could hear the leaf blower before she turned off the car’s engine.
Lila checked her appearance in the rearview mirror, straightened her collar, picked up her bag, and headed inside.
The lobby was cool and quiet. A woman sat behind the reception desk with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a visitor log open on the counter. She smiled when Lila approached.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. I’m here to see Frank Forsythe. I have a ten o’clock appointment.”
The woman glanced down at the log then back up at Lila. Something changed in her expression.
“I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “Mr. Forsythe passed away yesterday morning.”
For a moment Lila simply stood there as the words landed, and she began to comprehend their meaning.
She had driven for hours expecting a conversation that would fill the holes and give her answers. Instead, there was only the quiet lobby and the woman behind the desk watching her carefully.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said again. “We didn’t know you were coming. We would have called—“
“Was he…” Lila stopped. Started again. “Does he have family?”
“He does, yes. His daughter was with him.”
The woman paused.
“He wasn’t alone.”
Something inside Lila eased unexpectedly.
“Thank you,” she said, then turned and walked back out through the front door.
The parking lot was bright beneath the mid-morning sun. The leaf blower had moved closer now. Somewhere near the side of the building, someone was clearing clippings from a sidewalk.
Lila got into her car and closed the door.
She sat with her hands in her lap and looked through the windshield at the live oaks lining the entrance.
The Spanish moss moved slightly in a breeze she couldn’t feel from inside the car.
A cardinal landed on the hood. It turned its head and looked directly at her through the glass, the black mask vivid against the red.
The bird held her eyes for a beat, then flew away. She stared at the now empty spot.
Frank Forsythe was gone.
The realization wasn’t dramatic—just final.
She thought about the list in her notebook. The questions she’d memorized and the follow-up questions she’d prepared. All of them waiting for a conversation that would never happen.
The leaf blower stopped. A sudden quiet settled over the parking lot. After a minute, she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
The drive home felt longer than the drive there.
She took the same highway south, the same flat interior landscape, the same water towers and billboards. She passed the exit where she’d stopped earlier for gas and coffee. She kept driving.
Frank Forsythe had spent decades investigating other people’s bad decisions. He had retired, grown old, and died with his daughter sitting beside him. And whatever he knew about Thomas Simmons had gone with him.
He knew something.
The thought arrived quietly.
It died with him.
Lila tightened her hands on the steering wheel.
The hardest part wasn’t losing information. It was losing possibility.
For weeks she had been moving toward this meeting. Preparing for it and building questions around it. And without realizing it, she had started believing it might finally provide answers.
Now there would be no answers.
Eventually the landscape began to change. The coastal corridor returned gradually. Sea grapes appeared along roadsides. The quality of the light shifted. Even with the windows closed she could feel the Gulf was nearby.
Salt Flower Bay appeared on a green highway sign. She took the exit.
Familiar streets replaced interstate traffic. Familiar intersections and storefronts replaced highway exits and strip malls.
A few minutes later she turned onto her street and pulled into the driveway. She sat looking up at the pale-yellow house, with the screened porch and palm trees and the bougainvillea spilling color along the fence line.
Nothing had changed while she was gone, yet everything felt different.