Diane placed the last suitcase in the trunk.
She didn’t turn around right away. She stood there with her hands on the trunk lid, her gaze fixed on the black leather of her luggage—the one she carried to court, the one that had held case files, verdicts, and broken lives arranged in alphabetical order. Now it held sweaters, shoes, and a bottle of wine Timothe had slipped inside while saying, “For the trip.”
She closed the trunk. Turned around.
They were all there. Stephanie, arms crossed, still in her pajamas despite the hour. Timothe, hands in his pockets, looking like someone holding something back. Tatum, eyes red. Jimmy, standing straight and silent.
—Okay, Diane said.
—Okay, Stephanie said.
Silence. December wind through the dead rosebushes. A dry leaf skittered across the courtyard.
—We’re going to miss you, Tatum said.
—No.
—Yes.
Diane adjusted her sunglasses. December. Sunglasses. Nobody commented—it was Diane.
—Paris needs a good attorney, she said. Besançon will survive.
—Besançon, sure, Stephanie said. The rest of us, I’m not so sure.
Diane opened the car door. Stopped. Looked at Tatum.
—If anyone gives you trouble, call me. I’ll be back in three hours and ruin their life.
Tatum laughed. Cried a little. Both at once.
Diane got into her car. The engine started. The black sedan backed up, turned, and pulled onto the street. No honk. No hand waving from the window. Diane Marchal wasn’t sentimental.
But in the rearview mirror, she watched them all the way to the end of the street.
Three weeks later, Stephanie looked at the three empty ground-floor apartments.
The doors stood open. The walls were white. The smell of fresh paint lingered—Timothe had repainted everything, badly, with roller marks in the corners, but it was done. Three apartments. Three rents. Three tenants to find.
—I have three applications, she told Timothe. A twenty-five-year-old bank teller. A thirty-two-year-old writer. And...
She stopped.
—And?
—Williams Witter.
Timothe looked at her.
—Jimmy’s son?
—Jimmy’s son.
—The one who was obsessed with Tatum? The one Vanessa used as a weapon? That Williams?
—There’s only one.
Timothe leaned against the wall. The paint was still a little tacky. He didn’t notice.
—Are you going to tell Jimmy?
—I’m going to tell Jimmy.
She told Jimmy.
His reaction was exactly what she expected.
—No.
—Jimmy...
—No. Not here. Not in my home. Not after everything he did. Not after Vanessa. Not after the photos. Not after high school. No.
Tatum placed a hand on his arm. Jimmy pulled away. He paced back and forth in their living room, his jaw clenched, his fists closed—not with anger, but fear. Tatum could see it. It wasn’t rage. It was the terror of a man who had spent three books building a life and now saw his past come knocking at the door.
—His mother died, Jimmy, Tatum said softly.
—I know.
—She killed herself.
—I know.
—He’s alone.
Jimmy stopped. His back to the window. The dead rosebushes behind him, skeletal in the January cold.
—He’s twenty. He lost his mother. He has no one.
—He lost me a long time ago, Jimmy said. He made that choice.
—He was sixteen when he made it. His mother filled his head. You know that.
Jimmy didn’t answer. Tatum knew that silence—the one that meant he knew she was right, but his body still refused to admit it.
—I’m not saying yes, she said. I’m saying we’ll see.
Williams arrived on a Saturday morning in January.
No moving truck. No stacks of boxes. A duffel bag, a backpack, and a banker’s suit on a hanger, protected by a plastic garment bag. That was all. His entire life fit into three pieces of luggage.
He had changed. Tatum saw it immediately from the second-floor balcony. The sixteen-year-old boy who had stared at her in math class—that gaze too intense, too old for his age—was gone. In his place was a twenty-year-old young man, taller, thinner, his face hollowed out by something Tatum recognized at once. Grief. It left marks you couldn’t hide. Eyes slightly dulled. Shoulders slightly slumped. He walked as if the ground beneath him wasn’t entirely solid.
He looked up at the balcony. He saw Tatum. And he didn’t look at her. Not like before. Not with that intensity that had made her uncomfortable. He looked at her the way you look at someone you know, respect, and have nothing to say to.
Then he lowered his eyes and entered the building.
Tatum felt something loosen in her chest. Something she had carried for four years without knowing it.
Jimmy was in the stairwell.
He was going downstairs to get the mail. Williams was heading up toward his apartment. They crossed paths on the first-floor landing. Chance. Or not.
Williams stopped. Jimmy stopped.
The silence lasted three seconds. Three seconds containing four years of things left unsaid, slammed doors, blocked numbers, and a funeral Jimmy hadn’t attended because no one had told him about it.
—Hi, Williams said.
His voice was calm. Low. Not provocative.
Jimmy looked at him. His son. Twenty years old. The same chin as his own. The same hands. Vanessa’s eyes.
—What the hell are you doing here?
—I live here.
—No.
—Yes. I signed the lease. The middle apartment, ground floor.
—You don’t have the right.
—I do. I signed it. It’s legal.
Jimmy stepped down one stair. Then another. He found himself face-to-face with Williams. Taller than him now. By an inch. Maybe two.
—I don’t want you here.
—I know.
—Then why?
Williams didn’t answer right away. He looked at his father. For a long time. And when he spoke, his voice didn’t tremble, but something behind it did.
—Because Mom is dead. And you’re all I have left.
Jimmy staggered back as if he’d been struck. Then the anger returned—stronger, darker, the kind that protected him from pain.
—Are you kidding me? After everything your mother did to me? After what you did to me? You show up here and tell me I’m all you have left?
—Yes.
—No. You don’t get to do this. You don’t come here and play the prodigal son. Not after the photos. Not after the harassment. Not after—
—Dad.
The word. That word. Jimmy fell silent.
Williams hadn’t said “Dad” in four years.
Silence in the stairwell. The sound of the boiler. A door slammed somewhere—Stephanie, probably, listening from her landing and having just been found out.
Jimmy raised his hand. Williams didn’t step back. But Jimmy didn’t hit him. His hand remained suspended in the air, trembling, then fell back to his side.
—Stay if you want, Jimmy said. But don’t speak to me.
He went down the stairs. Walked out into the courtyard. The door slammed.
Williams remained on the landing. Alone. He set his duffel bag on the floor. Sat down on the step. And he stayed there for a long time, in the cold stairwell of 8 Branly Street, with the word “Dad” still in his mouth and no one there to hear it.