Chapter 8: The Night Before It Broke
Patrick arrived at seven with a leather bag, a recording device, and the particular focused quiet of a man who had heard many extraordinary things and learned not to show surprise until he'd heard all of them.
I told him everything.
Walter filled in the parts I didn't know.
Emily sat at the kitchen table and told the parts she had carried alone for eight years, her voice steady in the way that things are steady when they have been held tightly for too long and are finally being set down.
Patrick asked careful questions.
He wrote almost nothing down.
He listened the way very good lawyers listen — not for what you are saying, but for what the other side will say about what you are saying.
When we were finished, he sat back.
"Catherine Marsh," he said.
"I know of her.
She's excellent." He looked at me.
"If she sends those documents tonight, I can have an emergency application before a judge by nine tomorrow morning to prevent Carver's legal team from having them sealed or destroyed.
That gives us a window."
"How wide a window?"
"Narrow." He picked up his pen.
"Carver will move for an injunction the moment he knows we've filed.
We need the documents in hand, authenticated, and accompanied by a supporting statement from Catherine before he gets that injunction in place."
"And if he gets it in place first?"
"Then we fight the injunction.
Which we can win, but it takes months.
And in those months — " He left the rest of the sentence where it was.
"He has months to pressure people," I said.
"And to find that safe-deposit box." Patrick nodded.
"So we move tonight."
I called Catherine at nine.
She sent the encrypted files to Patrick's secure server at nine forty-two.
Patrick called his clerk.
His clerk called a colleague in Edinburgh who could retrieve the physical originals from the box by morning and courier them under legal seal.
By eleven, the house was quiet.
Walter had taken the sofa.
Mia was asleep in the spare room.
Emily and I had not spoken privately since the kitchen conversation the night before.
We moved around each other carefully, like two people who had not yet agreed on what they were to each other now.
I checked on Lily at half past eleven.
She was asleep with her arm around a stuffed elephant, completely undisturbed by the fact that she had started all of this by feeding bread through a wall.
I stood in her doorway for a moment.
"Hey," Emily said softly behind me.
I turned.
She was in the hallway, arms crossed over her chest.
Not defensively.
More like she was holding herself together.
"I know it doesn't fix it," she said.
"Eight years of not telling you.
I know saying I was scared isn't enough."
"It's not enough," I agreed.
"But I understand it."
She looked at me.
"That's not the same as forgiving it," I said.
"No," she said.
"It isn't."
We stood in Lily's doorway together for a moment, watching our daughter sleep.
"Is there a chance?" Emily asked quietly.
Not performing it.
Just asking.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
"Ask me when this is over."
She nodded.
That was enough for tonight.
My phone lit up on the hallway table.
A message from a number I didn't recognize.
Four words: *Stop now.
Last chance.*
Carver.
May you like
I set the phone face-down.
Then I went and made sure the front door was locked.
