"And I'll need my own entrance code for the building."
"You've had one for six weeks," he said. "Lena changed it after the third week. I didn't tell you?"
I stared at him.
"You've had full building access since week three," he said, with the specific neutral delivery of someone who was not going to acknowledge that this was a significant piece of information.
"You could have told me that."
"You didn't ask."
I stood with the particular quality of feeling that I associated with being outmaneuvered by someone who had been paying more careful attention than I realized, and which was a feeling I did not often have and found, now, more amusing than anything else.
"My father," I said. "When he asks about your intentions."
"I'll tell him I intend to be worth the trust."
I held that.
"That's a good answer," I said.
"It's an accurate one."
I picked up my laptop from the table and walked toward the office. Toward the room next to it. I would need to measure it, I had specific requirements for workspace, lighting and layout and the position of the desk relative to the window, but from what I had seen of it in passing, it had good light. Southern exposure. The same river view as the kitchen.
I stopped in the hallway.
"Dominic."
He looked up from the desk.
"I had full building access for six weeks," I said.
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me because..."
"Because you were still deciding whether to stay." He held my gaze. "I wasn't going to give you a reason that wasn't a reason."
I stood with that.
I thought about the river outside, making its way to the Gulf. I thought about my mother at twenty-five, deciding to stay in something that could cost me, deciding anyway because the decision was hers to make. I thought about a drive on a workbench and a sworn testimony and a sentence that had been waiting for seventeen years for someone to finish what it had started.
If this is found by anyone other than D.C., I ask only that they finish it.
I had finished it.
I was, I thought, still finishing things. Different things. Things that required staying.
"Good answer," I said again.
* * *
Chapter 31: Margaret
Tran returned the photograph on a Friday.
Not in person, I sent it by courier in a padded envelope with a brief note: Certified copy made for the record. Original returned as promised., D.T. The envelope arrived at eleven in the morning and Avery signed for it and carried it to the kitchen table and sat down before I opened it.