"You going to be okay with whatever she reads us?"
"Define okay."
"Keeping your hand away from your phone. Keeping Marco's name out of your mouth."
"I'll manage."
"That's what you said last time."
"It's still the best I have."
Cole watches me over the open textbook. His eyes move from my phone to my hand on the counter, then to my face. The pause is longer than it used to be. Softer. He checks on me without smoothing the edges off himself first.
He must find whatever he needs on my face because he goes back to his textbook, and I scrape the last of the burned egg from the pan into the trash.
She arrives at 7:40. Her key turns in the lock, the specific metallic sequence I've been tracking for weeks, and my hands go still on the counter before I can make them keep moving. Boots off. Bag down. The hallway routine. I shift half an inch toward the door with every sound.
She appears in the kitchen doorway, coat still on, hair pulled back, eyes direct and jaw sharp. Exhaustion sits under her eyes. She looks like she's made a decision.
"Sit down?" Cole offers, already pulling out the chair.
"I'll stand." She stays in the doorway with her back against the frame, facing us, exit behind her and the room in front of her.
"I told you both the summary last night," she says. "The calls. The envelope. The letter. What it said. But you haven't heard the words. His words. I want you to hear them the way I heard them, because the tone matters."
She reaches into her coat pocket, pulls out a folded page, and unfolds it. The paper stays against her chest with the text facing her, the block letters visible through the thin sheet from the back. She doesn't hand it over. She reads from it.
"I've been thinking about you. I hope you're well." Her voice is flat. Clinical. "I know you've built a life for yourself and I'm proud of what you've become. A father never stops caring about his daughter."
Cole's textbook closes.
"I'm writing because I believe that healing requires communication. I've done the work. Eight years of reflection. I'm a different man now." She pauses. One inhale. "I'm in Briarcliff. I'll be here for a while. If you're open to it, I'd like to see you."
She folds the letter.
The folded paper disappears into her pocket, and nobody moves.
"You hear it," Maya says. "The calm. The patience. 'I'll leave it up to you.' Talia called it—he writes like he's changed but the methodology is identical. The performance just got better in eight years."
"He's here," I say, and my voice sounds like something being scraped across stone.
"He's here. Settled. Waiting. Calls first, testing the perimeter. Envelope second, establishing proximity. Letter third, the reasonable invitation. It reads like concern. It functions as a claim."
The burned egg smell clings to the air. Cole looks at Maya without brightness, without managed warmth, without the fury from the corridor. His textbook stays closed under his hand while she narrates her own threat.
"Talia told me the carrying is what kills you," Maya says. "She's right. I'm done carrying it. I want to contact Richard myself. I want the legal options. The no-contact order, the parole violation, whatever mechanisms exist. I want to do this properly."
"I'll call him tonight," Cole says.
"I'll call him," Maya says. "He's my attorney. The call comes from me."
Cole nods and leaves the phone where it is.
She looks at me.
I haven't spoken since she said he's here. My knuckles are white against the counter, and my thumb twitches toward the phone I left beside the sink. The man who broke her ribs and cracked her arm and put her in a hospital at thirteen is breathing the same air as the woman standing in my doorway. The violence in me has an address, a face, and requires one phone call.
"Dante," Maya says, and my grip tightens on the counter before I make myself look at her.
