72 #3
He did not give it to her. He sat across from her, hands loosely clasped, letting her cry without making himself useful in a way that would confuse the room.
That, too, was care.
She hated how many kinds of care he was learning after the marriage had ended.
"I thought being left by you was the thing I had to survive," Dorothy said.
Trevor did not answer.
"But it keeps happening in smaller ways," she continued, voice thinning. "A door. A phone. A title in an email. Someone deciding distance is safer than honesty. Someone saying tomorrow and then becoming counsel, staff, formal coordination."
Her phone sat on the bench beside her, dark and silent.
Dorothy stared at it as if it might explain why love, or almost-love, or whatever fragile thing existed between her and Sebastian, had become another place where waiting hurt.
Trevor's voice came gently. "Hood may not be leaving."
Dorothy laughed once, but it broke. "That is what everyone says when someone is already halfway gone."
Trevor flinched.
She saw it and felt immediate guilt, then exhaustion at the guilt. His pain was real, but she could not keep editing every true sentence to avoid touching it.
"I am not saying that to punish you," she said.
"I know."
He stopped himself after the phrase, and for some reason that nearly made her cry harder.
"I believe you," he corrected softly.
Dorothy looked at him.
The correction mattered.
He had not meant to echo. He had chosen better.
The smallness of it made the grief larger.
"I don't know what to do," she whispered.
Trevor looked down at his hands. "You can call him again."
"He won't answer."
"You can send one message. Not many. Not a plea. A truth."
"What truth?"
Trevor's throat moved.
Dorothy saw how difficult the answer was before he gave it.
"That his distance hurt you, and you want to understand why. That you are sorry for doubting him. That you will not force him to forgive you quickly." He paused. "And that you are not asking for shelter. You are asking for honesty."
Dorothy's chest tightened.
That sounded like Sebastian. Not because Trevor was imitating him, but because he had finally understood the kind of language Sebastian deserved.
"You are helping me reach him," she said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Trevor looked up.
The answer was there before he spoke, naked enough that Dorothy almost regretted asking.
"Because I know what it cost you when I did not answer," he said. "And because if he is pulling away for reasons beyond anger, losing time will hurt you both."
Dorothy's breath caught.
There.
The thought she had not dared fully touch.
Reasons beyond anger.
Vanessa's silence. Sebastian's sudden formality. The email too polished to be only pride. The withdrawal too complete to be only hurt. Dorothy's mind began arranging the pieces again, not from panic this time, but from instinct sharpened by weeks of manipulation.
"What if Vanessa got to him?" she asked.
Trevor's face hardened.
"Then we find out how."
We.
He said it without emphasizing it, but Dorothy heard the danger and steadiness inside the word.
Not romantic. Not possessive.
A line drawn against Vanessa's next attack.
Before Dorothy could answer, the conservatory door opened again.
Victor entered with Hale.
Both men stopped when they saw Trevor sitting across from Dorothy. Victor's eyes narrowed at once, but whatever he saw on Dorothy's face kept him from speaking the first sharp sentence waiting behind his teeth.
Hale held a folder in one hand. "We found something."
Dorothy rose at once, wiping the last trace of tears from her face. "About Sebastian?"
"Possibly." Hale glanced at Trevor, then back to Dorothy. "Vanessa received an unmarked courier delivery before she disappeared last night. We traced the courier route. One stop was Hood Tower."
Dorothy's body went cold.
Trevor stood too.
Victor's expression turned lethal. "What was delivered?"
Hale hesitated.
Dorothy hated hesitations now.
"We do not have the contents yet," Hale said. "But a receptionist at Hood Tower confirmed a private envelope was delivered directly to Sebastian's executive floor shortly before midnight."
The room changed.
Dorothy looked down at her phone again.
Sebastian's message.
He had written it after the envelope.
After whatever Vanessa had sent.
After whatever made him turn from guarded and hurt into formal, distant, untouchable Miss Perry.
Dorothy felt the old wound and the new fear collide so hard that the room blurred.
Trevor took half a step forward, then stopped himself.
Victor did not stop. He came to her side, but Dorothy barely felt it.
Hale said something else about tracing the sender, about Hood counsel not responding yet, about Vanessa's pattern of coercion.
Dorothy heard none of it clearly.
All she could see was Sebastian withdrawing into silence, Trevor leaving her in the hospital, every unanswered call, every careful title, every promise of tomorrow that became distance.
She spoke before she knew the words were coming.
Her voice was low, raw, and young in a way she hated.
"Everyone leaves when I need them."