Jace steps forward. The rapid forward motion of a man who would rather act than think. "We go after her. We go to LA. We tell her we don't care about the deal, we don't care about what is online. We just care about her."
Reid nods slowly in consideration. "I don’t know if that’s the right move. She has so much already on her plate with her father's situation… And she didn't reply to any of our calls or messages."
"So what, we just stand here? Doing nothing?"
The question sits in the air. Three men in a sparring ring with dirt on their clothes and bruises forming and no opponent that can be fought with fists.
I've been thinking about this for seven days. While Jace paced and Reid went still and the cabin emptied itself of everything that made it a home, I sat at my desk and did what I do. I came up with a plan.
"I think I might have an idea," I say. "On how to fix this."
Jace turns. Reid lifts his head. Both of them look at me, standing in the dirt with a bruised jaw and a sore back and quiet certainty.
The wind settles. The valley is still.
And for the first time since Maya left, the silence doesn't feel like absence.
It feels like the moment before taking action.
36
MAYA
My father takes the stairs one at a time.
Left foot up. Right foot follows. His hand on the banister, gripping harder than he'd want me to notice. I'm behind him, close enough to catch him, far enough back that he doesn't feel monitored. Ray Reeves is a man who has been taking care of himself for sixty-one years and the indignity of needing help on his own staircase is costing him something I can see in the set of his shoulders.
"I'm fine, Maya."
"I know you're fine."
"Then stop hovering."
"I'm not hovering. I'm walking behind you. In my own house. Up my own stairs."
He reaches the top. Turns and gives me a look that is so precisely my father. The dry, patient expression so familiar, that something in my chest loosens for the first time in days.
I settle him in his bedroom. Extra pillows. Water on the nightstand. His reading glasses, his book, the small brass bellmy mother placed beside the lamp so he can ring if he needs something. He looks at the bell with an expression that suggests he would rather have a second cardiac event than use it.
"Rest," I say.
"I've been resting for a week."
"Rest more."
I close the door softly and stand in the hallway for a moment, listening. The house settles around me. The specific sounds of a place I grew up in. The creak of the floorboard by the bathroom, the tick of the radiator in the hall, the faint hum of the refrigerator.
I go downstairs and quietly, without making it obvious, I check the windows. The front door has the new deadbolt I noticed when I arrived. The side door to the garage has a chain that wasn't there before.
My parents shouldn't have to live like this. They should be worrying about the garden and the community center and whether the neighbor's dog is getting into the compost again.
Daniel took that from them the way he took everything from me. Remotely, invisibly, through a screen, with the confidence of a man who has never been made to answer for anything.
I'm done running from him.
The thought has been forming for three days, since that day in the hospital where I read his card. It solidified while I watched my father sleep in a hospital bed and listened to my mother describe months of harassment she'd been absorbing in silence. It hardened into something structural the morning I woke up in my childhood bedroom and realized that every person I love has been paying the price for Daniel's cruelty while Daniel pays nothing.
My silence has been his accomplice. He relied on the fact that I was too humiliated, too afraid, too tired to speak.
