CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NORA
Day Nineteen
Colin Ames is arrested at six in the morning.
Police match his printer to the card, find my studio schedule in his search history, and recover the cheap broken lens from an online purchase account. He admits sending the package but insists he only wanted me to "understand the consequences."
Consequences.
The word belongs to people who mistake cruelty for natural law.
Maren handles the protective order. Tessa handles the press. I handle nothing well.
By afternoon, adrenaline has drained from my body, leaving every room too loud. I return to the studio with security and try to work. The first sound in the alley makes me drop a memory card. The second makes me lock the door. By the third, I cannot feel my fingertips.
I call Rhett.
He answers softly, as if already expecting fear.
"Are you safe?"
"Yes."
"Where are you?"
The question could be control. His next words change it.
"You don't have to tell me. I only need to know whether security is with you."
"At the studio. Two officers outside."
"Okay."
I sit beneath the worktable with my back against a cabinet. "I know he's in custody."
"Your body doesn't yet."
"Did Sloane teach you that?"
"She taught me several irritating facts."
I listen to him breathe.
"Tell me where you are," he says.
"Under the table."
"Good table?"
"Solid oak. Could survive an earthquake."
"Five things you can see."
We move through the grounding exercise. Five things. Four I can touch. Three I can hear. Two I can smell. One I can taste.
"Coffee," I say.
"Bad coffee?"
"Studio coffee. It has legal immunity."
My hands stop tingling.
Neither of us mentions the elevator.
"Do you want me to keep talking?" he asks.
"No."
"Do you want me to stay on the line?"
"Yes."
He stays.
For thirty-seven minutes, we say nothing.
I hear hotel-room movement, a glass placed on a table, the low sound of traffic through his window. He does not fill silence to make himself necessary. He simply remains available.
Eventually I climb from beneath the table.
"I can work now," I say.
"Okay."
"Rhett?"
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
He does not add anything that converts gratitude into debt.
After the call, I begin editing the photograph from the equipment drive. Rhett and the little goalie. Lucas in the background. Joy arriving without permission.
I print it large.
At seven, Tessa stops by with a statement from the Breakers. Colin's name is omitted because charges are pending. The organization condemns harassment and confirms enhanced security for staff and foundation participants.
"Rhett wrote the first draft," she says.
"I thought you wrote statements."
"I do. His draft contained the phrase 'coward with a camera.' Legal objected."
"Sensibly."
"He accepted edits. Eventually."
She notices the print drying on the rack.
"That is good," she says.
"It is."
"Will you give it to him?"
"No gifts."
"The agreement restricts him, not you."
I look at Rhett's unguarded face in the image.
"Not yet."
That evening, Maren brings dinner to the studio. She finds me placing the print into archival paper.
"You called him," she says.
"Tessa told you?"
"No. Your face did. Also, you stopped glaring at your phone."
"He stayed on the line."
"And?"
"Nothing. That was the point."
Maren opens the food containers. "Safety can be very quiet."
I touch the edge of the wrapped photograph.
For eighteen months, I wanted Rhett to tell the world I belonged in his life.
Now he is learning to be present without announcing ownership.
I am not ready to forgive him.
But I am beginning to believe he may become someone forgiveness would not endanger.