Chapter 9: What Heals Slowly
Three weeks passed.
Diane left the house four days after that morning — not quietly, but not with the fight she had promised.
Her lawyer had apparently advised her that the combination of the videos, the witness statement, and the removed documents made an aggressive posture unwise.
She took two suitcases and Tyler's soccer gear and the coffee maker she had bought herself, and she did not say goodbye to Maya.
She said goodbye to Becca in the driveway.
Thomas didn't hear what passed between them.
He watched through the kitchen window.
Becca stood straight and didn't cry until her mother's car had turned the corner.
Then she sat down on the front step and put her face in her hands.
Thomas went outside and sat beside her.
He didn't say anything.
Neither did she.
After a while she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked out at the empty street.
"I know she's my mom," Becca said.
"I know that doesn't just go away."
"It doesn't have to go away," he said.
"I still think what she did was wrong."
"It was."
Becca was quiet for a moment.
"Can I still come here?
After everything gets sorted out legally and whatever.
Can I still come see Maya?"
He looked at her.
"Maya would be upset if you didn't."
That wasn't quite a smile on Becca's face, but it was close.
Inside, the house was different.
Not fixed — different.
The lock was gone from Maya's door, the screw holes filled and painted over by Thomas on the second morning.
The filing cabinet had been opened by a locksmith; the blue folder was recovered from the storage unit by court order ten days later, intact, every page present.
Maya's mother's will was exactly as the letter had described.
The estate — not enormous, but real and meaningful, the careful savings of a woman who had wanted her daughters protected — was placed into a trust in Maya and Mia's names, with Thomas as trustee until they came of age.
The child welfare case was ongoing.
The consultant had filed her report.
There would be hearings.
Diane's lawyer was already working to minimize the recorded statements as isolated incidents of stress.
Thomas's lawyer was equally busy.
But that was happening somewhere else, in offices and courtrooms.
Here, in this house, other things were happening too.
Maya started eating at the dining table again.
The first night, she had asked, very quietly, if it was all right.
Thomas had pulled out her chair and said, "This is your seat.
It has always been your seat." She had climbed up and unfolded her napkin with great seriousness and asked if there was any more of the pasta with the cheese on top.
Mia had laughed.
It was the first time Thomas had heard her laugh in longer than he could remember.
Carol came for dinner on a Thursday.
She brought a pie and stayed for three hours and told stories about the neighborhood from before Thomas had moved in, and Maya sat beside her and listened with her chin in her hand, completely absorbed.
When Carol was leaving, Maya hugged her at the door.
Carol looked over Maya's head at Thomas with an expression that didn't need any words.
After Carol left, Maya helped carry the dishes to the kitchen.
She was quiet for a moment, stacking plates with careful concentration.
Then she said, without looking up:
"Dad.
I knew you'd believe me.
Once you saw."
He set down what he was holding.
"I should have seen sooner," he said.
"I'm sorry I didn't."
Maya considered this with the gravity of someone who has thought about it already and reached their own conclusion.
"You were far away," she said.
"And she was good at pretending."
"That's true," he said.
"But I should have looked harder."
Maya stacked the last plate.
She looked up at him.
"You looked when it mattered," she said.
"That's what Mia always said.
She said you'd look when it mattered."
He didn't trust his voice for a moment.
May you like
"Mia was right," he finally said.
Maya nodded, satisfied, and carried the plates to the sink.
