Chapter 43 - Brother and Sister
Abigail’s second visit with Noah lasted three hours.
No reporters.
No lawyers.
No one except me, Grant, the child advocate downstairs, and Rosa within calling distance.
At first Abigail sat on the nursery rug as if she were visiting a museum.
Noah solved that.
He climbed into her lap.
She froze.
“He does that,” I said.
“Why?”
“He likes you.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“He likes fast.”
Abigail looked down at him.
Noah touched her nose.
“Nose.”
She laughed.
The sound changed the room.
Grant stood in the doorway but did not enter until Abigail looked up and said, “You can come in.”
He did.
Slowly.
Noah immediately demanded that Grant build a block tower.
Abigail corrected his engineering.
“You need a wider base.”
Grant looked at her. “You sound like your mother.”
She stiffened.
He noticed.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s okay.”
A beat.
“She liked building things?”
“Systems. Plans. Schedules. Not block towers.”
Abigail smiled faintly.
For twenty minutes, they talked about Lydia without turning her into a saint or a wound.
Her terrible coffee.
Her habit of buying too many notebooks.
The way she sang off-key.
Abigail knew a lullaby Grant had forgotten.
Grant knew Lydia hated pears.
Tiny ordinary facts.
Those rebuilt more than legal documents could.
Then Abigail asked me, “Were you there when Noah got hurt?”
“Yes.”
“You hit Vivienne.”
The room went still.
“Yes.”
“Would you do it again?”
I looked at Noah.
“I would protect him again. I would try to do it without hitting anyone if I could.”
She studied me.
“That sounds like court answer.”
“It’s the true one.”
She accepted that.
Then she asked the harder question.
“Would you protect me?”
Grant looked at me.
I did not look at him.
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t live here?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I’m mean?”
“That depends how mean.”
She smiled.
Then cried without warning.
Children often crossed emotions without warning signs adults depended on.
“I don’t know where home is,” she whispered.
I sat beside her.
“You don’t have to know today.”
“What if I never know?”
“Then you build it from people who keep showing up.”
Grant looked down.
I knew the sentence affected him too.
The legal case moved over the next week.
Marcus’s emergency custody petition weakened under the old agreement.
Marianne faced charges but began cooperating.
Creed’s ledger expanded into a network of illegal surveillance and information brokering.
Evelyn Cross’s name appeared more often than prosecutors liked.
Again.
The old case reopened at the edges.
Then a forensic accountant found something stranger.
Two million dollars had moved out of a dormant Hale account three months before Lydia died.
Recipient: Morrow Children’s Foundation.
Eleanor frowned.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
The foundation dissolved one year later.
Its director had used a false identity.
But the signature authorizing the transfer belonged to Lydia.
Grant stared at it.
“What was she funding?”
Nobody knew.
Until Abigail spoke from the doorway.
“I do.”
Everyone turned.
“My mother told me about Morrow.”
Eleanor went pale.
May you like
Abigail swallowed.
“She said it was where children went when powerful fathers couldn’t be trusted.”
