Chapter 7 - What Was Kept
They couldn’t simply open Richard’s storage unit.
Daniel said it twice because Nathan kept looking at the address.
Instead, they gave Shaw the information.
Then Nathan went home with Beth and tried to build a normal evening out of chicken nuggets and bathwater.
Noah wanted his blue cup.
Lily wanted every light on.
Nathan left them on.
At bedtime, she sat against her pillow.
“Will Vanessa come here?”
“No. She isn’t allowed to come inside.”
“What if she has a key?”
“Aunt Beth changed the locks.”
“What if she gets another key?”
Nathan sat on the floor beside her bed.
“Then we’ll deal with that. You don’t have to stay awake and figure everything out.”
Her eyes filled.
“I thought if I watched Noah, he’d be okay.”
Nathan bowed his head.
There it was.
The job his six-year-old had given herself while he went to work.
“You’re his sister,” he said. “You’re allowed to play with him. You’re allowed to get annoyed with him. Keeping him safe is my job.”
“You weren’t there.”
“No,” he said.
He made himself stay in the sentence.
“I wasn’t.”
Lily wiped her face against the rabbit.
He didn’t ask her to forgive him.
He stayed until she slept.
The next morning, his attorney called about emergency custody arrangements.
Vanessa had hired counsel.
She was alleging that Nathan had coached Lily to avoid sharing custody of Noah.
“She’ll fight,” the attorney said.
Nathan looked through Beth’s kitchen window at the children drawing with sidewalk chalk.
“Then we fight with records.”
By afternoon, Shaw had more questions about the storage unit.
Richard had agreed to open it after being contacted.
“He says it contains business property,” she told Nathan.
“Does it?”
“We’ll see.”
Hours passed.
Then Richard called.
Nathan let it go to voicemail.
His father left thirteen seconds.
“You need to understand that grief makes people do foolish things. Whatever they tell you, I was protecting this family.”
Nathan played it once.
Then forwarded it to Shaw.
She called twenty minutes later.
“We recovered several boxes from the unit.”
He couldn’t speak.
“One contains financial records. Another contains personal effects.”
“Whose?”
“Claire’s.”
Nathan shut his eyes.
“There’s a silver shoe,” Shaw said.
The missing one.
The one Lily remembered.
The one that had never been found at the crash.
“Where was it?” he asked.
Shaw’s answer came slowly.
“In a bag with your wife’s name on it.”
May you like
“Claire’s?”
“No. Vanessa’s.”
