Chapter EIGHT #2
Mei's skin prickled.
"That's it?"
"That's all."
"Who put it there?"
"Camera caught someone in a hooded jacket, but not a clear face. Police are reviewing the footage."
The wording bothered Mei all morning.
Ask your grandmother.
It sounded like someone believed Grandma knew more than she had told. At lunch, Mei cornered Lillian by phone.
"Is there anything about Mom you didn't tell me?"
Grandma went quiet.
"What happened?"
Mei explained the note.
"Come home," Lillian said.
"I have two classes left."
"Mei."
"Grandma, if there's something, just tell me."
A long breath came through the speaker. "Grace once talked to an attorney."
Mei's heart sped up.
"What kind?"
"A divorce attorney. About six months before she died. She told me she had a consultation, then later said she was going to try counseling with Daniel instead. I didn't know she had started planning to leave again."
"Why didn't you tell police?"
"I did. Years ago. They knew. I also told Ruiz when the case reopened."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you are twelve, and I am trying to give you information without making your mother's marriage the only thing you know about her."
Mei understood and still felt left out.
"Was there anything else?"
"Not that I am hiding from you."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
After lunch, Tiana found Mei sketching the same eye over and over in the margin of her notebook.
"That note is messing with you."
"Maybe whoever sent it knows something."
"Or wants you to think they know something."
Mei looked up. "When did you become Detective Ruiz?"
"I have been watching crime shows with my mother since birth. I am basically qualified."
"That is not how qualifications work."
"Agree to disagree."
The joke helped for about thirty seconds. At 1:48 p.m., the classroom phone rang. Ms. Patel answered. Her expression changed.
"Mei, pack your things. The office needs you."
The room went silent in the way classrooms did when somebody else's problem became interesting. Mei put her notebook in her bag.
Tiana stood too.
* * *
The morning after Daniel's school arrest, Mei expected everybody to know.
Most people did not.
That was almost worse. She walked past students arguing about a basketball game, somebody's lost AirPods, and a teacher's surprise quiz. Her life had changed shape again, and the hallway refused to acknowledge it. Tiana met her at the locker.
"How are you?"
"Do not ask me that like a therapist."
"Fine. Rate today from one to ten."
"Still therapist."
"Would you prefer interpretive dance?"
Mei smiled. "Four."
"Four is survivable."
At lunch, Caleb apologized for showing her Daniel's socialmedia post days earlier.
"I didn't know it was like... serious serious," he said.
"It was serious before you knew."
He nodded, embarrassed. "Yeah. Sorry."
Mei accepted the apology. That felt strangely adult. The school resource officer later told her that Daniel had claimed he only wanted to deliver supplies and had forgotten the exact restriction in the protection order.
"Do you believe him?" Mei asked.
"Belief is not my job. Documentation is."
Everybody had learned Ruiz's language.
Daniel's attorney requested a hearing to challenge parts of the order. The request meant Mei had to live with the possibility that restrictions could change. Dr. Sato helped her separate legal uncertainty from immediate safety.
"What is true tonight?"
"He's not allowed here."
"What else?"
"Grandma has cameras. Alex is downstairs. Police know."
"Good. Tomorrow's hearing is not happening in your bedroom tonight."
Mei wrote that one down too. A few days later, Detective Ruiz arrived with news about the anonymous note pushed through the school entrance. The hooded person on camera had not been Daniel. It was the private investigator's employee.
"So he wrote it," Mei said.
"He denies writing it. He admits delivering an envelope Daniel gave him."
"That's basically the same thing."
"Legally, not quite."
"Legally is exhausting."
Ruiz did not disagree.
The employee claimed Daniel said the envelope contained paperwork for the school.
Investigators recovered texts showing Daniel had asked him to "drop something where she will get it without the grandmother intercepting."
That message mattered. It tied Daniel to the delivery even if the employee would not admit knowing the contents.
"Can you arrest him for that?" Grandma asked.
"The prosecutor is reviewing witness-intimidation and orderviolation charges."
Again: reviewing.
Again: not yet. Mei felt anger rise.
"What does he have to do before somebody keeps him?"
Ruiz met her eyes. "I hear you."
"That's not an answer."
"No. It isn't. Judges decide release conditions based on law, charges, history, and evidence available at the time. I can document. Prosecutors can argue. Courts decide."
Mei hated systems that had verbs divided among different adults. That evening, she drew a comic in which Detective Ruiz, a prosecutor, and a judge passed a giant folder to one another while a dragon labeled PROCEDURE breathed paperwork.
Tiana demanded a copy.
"This is art," Mei said.
"This is journalism."
The joke helped until the motion light came on after midnight. Then every lesson about procedure disappeared behind instinct.
Mei sat up.
A shape crossed the window. The next chapter of her life began with a raccoon. It would not stay funny for long.
* * *
"Only Mei," Ms. Patel said.
"I'm her emotional-support person."
"Sit down, Tiana."
Mei reached the office and saw Principal Monroe standing with
the school resource officer again. This time nobody said her father was not there.
"Where is he?" Mei asked.
Monroe's face tightened. "Outside the main entrance. He has not entered the building. Doors are locked. Police are on the way."
The world became very small.
"Did he see me?"
"No."
"How do you know?"
"Because you have been inside and he just arrived."
The resource officer guided Mei into the counselor's office, away from exterior windows. "Your grandmother is coming."
Mei's hands began to shake.
"He can't take me, right?"
"No. There is a temporary protection order and a custody order. He cannot remove you from school."
"What if he comes in?"
"He won't."
The officer said it with confidence Mei envied. Two minutes later, Tiana burst into the room, having apparently convinced a teacher that friendship outranked instructions.
"Where is he?"
"Outside."
"I hope he steps on a Lego."
Principal Monroe entered behind her. "Tiana."
"A very sharp educational building block," Tiana amended.
Mei laughed once, then covered her mouth because the laugh felt wrong in a crisis.
"No," Tiana said. "Keep it. He doesn't get to take jokes too."
Outside, Daniel refused to leave.
Through the wall they could hear nothing, but the officer's radio carried fragments. Male refusing verbal command. Claims parental rights. Keep entrance secure. Then a phrase that made Mei's stomach drop. Possible weapon in vehicle. The counselor immediately turned down the radio, but Mei had heard.
"What weapon?"
"We don't know that he has one," Monroe said. "An officer is being cautious."
Mei stared at the floor tiles. Her father's anger had always filled rooms.
Now it occupied a parking lot she could not see.
Ten minutes later the resource officer returned.
"Police have him in custody. He refused to leave after being told the protection order barred contact, so officers arrested him for the alleged violation. You do not have to see him."
"Was there a weapon?" Mei asked.
"A utility knife in his work bag. Legal to possess for his job. It stayed in the vehicle."
That should have made it better.
It did not.
Daniel had come to the school after being told not to contact her. He had not needed a knife in his hand to make the message clear. On the ride home, Grandma kept checking the mirror.
"I am sorry I got mad about you not telling me the divorcelawyer thing," Mei said.
Lillian glanced over. "You were allowed to be mad."
"I thought the note meant you had some huge secret."
"That may be exactly what the sender wanted."
Mei looked out the window. "So who sent it?"
"We do not know."
At home, Ruiz called with one detail from the school camera footage. The person who delivered the note had arrived in a dark blue sedan. The same sedan used by the private investigator.
"Did he send it?" Grandma asked.
"He denies it," Ruiz said. "His attorney says he stopped working the case two days ago. We are checking his movements."
"For who?"
This time Ruiz answered.
"He was hired through Daniel's family-law attorney."
Mei felt vindicated and frightened at once. Then Ruiz added, "But that doesn't mean the investigator wrote the note. The vehicle may have been borrowed. We are pulling additional camera footage." The case kept doing that: answering one question and opening another.
That evening, Daniel was released under stricter conditions pending the next hearing. Grandma was furious, Alex was worse, and Mei asked them both to stop arguing about a decision none of them controlled. Later, after a deliberately ordinary movie night, Mei fell asleep on the couch.
At 1:08 a.m., the motion light outside came on. A shadow moved across the front window.