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Every instinct I own says stop her. I’ve obeyed that instinct my whole life and it has never once been wrong about what I wanted. But it’s wrong about what she needs.

Then the room is just a room again, and I’m alone.

25

VEDA

Packing takes seven minutes. I check my phone when I start and when I finish, because timing a catastrophe is the one control I can still exercise.

Seven minutes to undo two months. The lavender suitcase open on the bed I’ve slept in. The jewelry dish emptied except for the obscene ring, which I leave on the dresser because it was never mine, and I won’t play at owning it on my way out the door.

The house pretends not to hear me. Staff who greeted me warmly this morning have gone invisible, which is its own kind of eloquence. They know. In a house like this, everyone always knows before the person it’s happening to, and I was the last to learn the biggest thing, so of course I’m the last to learn I’m leaving too.

I fold the suit last. The one Adeline chose in a Boston fitting room a lifetime ago, the one I wore to a keynote where a silver-haired stranger clapped for none of my slides.

I almost leave it.

But then I pack it, because it was mine before any of this, and I need one more thing in the case that predates him.

Sarah’s door is the hardest thing I have ever had to walk toward.

It stands ajar, her nightlight blue inside, and I can hear her breathing the way she does when she’s deep asleep. I should walk past. Clean break, no goodbye, spare us both. That’s the merciful decision, the one I’d counsel any colleague to make.

I go in anyway, because I’m apparently not going to be smart about this. I never was. Somewhere in the last two months I stopped being able to hold this child at a clinical distance. That failure is either the best thing I did here or the thing about to hurt us both worst, and I no longer have the objectivity to tell which.

I was going to take her from here. Save her from her father. I can’t do that now. Not if anything he told me was true.

If he really is going to end the Brancatis’ operation, then he’s not the monster I made him out to be. That doesn’t mean I can stay here, though. Because I don’t know what to believe when it comes out of Lupo’s mouth, and being this close to a huge counterfeit drug operation will end my career.

What’s left of it, anyway.

Sarah’s a small shape under the purple comforter, Pip crushed to her chest, auburn hair grown long enough now to stick up across the pillow.

I stand over her, sleeping, and understand that leaving Lupo and leaving Sarah are two different amputations. Only one of them is deserved.

Whatever her father is, this child chose me instantly and never once revised the choice. Now, I’m about to become one more adult who vanished from a hospital-shaped life.

“Veda?” Her voice is thick with sleep.

I’ve woken her, the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do. “Hey. Go back to sleep, piccolina.”

“Are you a doctor right now or my stepmom?” Her eyes barely open, the question drifting up from somewhere below waking.

“Always your stepmom.” The lie comes out whole and warm, and it takes me everything I have left to say it without sobbing. “I just came to check your breathing—doctor habit. Everything’s perfect. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” She burrows down, already going under. “Piano tomorrow?”

I cannot tell this child the truth, cannot say goodbye, cannot break her heart at midnight over a man’s crimes she had no part in.

“We’ll see,” I whisper, which isn’t yes and isn’t the truth either. She takes it the way she takes everything I tell her, with total trust, and falls back asleep holding a stuffed wren, believing I’ll be there in the morning to fix her hand position.

I kiss her forehead where the hair is soft, and I leave. I do not let myself make a sound until I’m well past the door. Then I make several low sounds into my own hand in the dark hallway.

And Diana catches me at the top of the stairs.

She’s in her dressing gown, leaning on the cane. She is not surprised to see me with a suitcase. She looks at the case, and at my face, and something in her settles into a decision.

“So.” Her English, careful and complete, the English she uses when she’s choosing every word. “He told you. Finally, the fool, or you found it. Which?”