“That’s why I won’t speak for her.”
Richard sounded tired, which unsettled me more than his old arrogance.
He asked whether I thought he deserved to lose everything because of his mistakes.
I told him the people affected by those mistakes were entitled to accurate records and honest answers.
What happened to his reputation would depend partly on what he chose to say and do next.
He paused before asking about Jessica.
I said he should not use me to contact her.
Then he asked whether I had sold the house.
I had not yet listed it, and the question felt suddenly intrusive.
“My housing plans are not your business,” I said.
Richard sighed.
“I suppose I’ve made a habit of asking people to protect me,” he replied.
I could not tell whether the remark represented genuine insight or another attempt to win sympathy.
I wished him a peaceful evening and ended the call.
Afterward I sat alone for several minutes, looking at the dark screen.
A year earlier I would have considered it impossible to speak calmly to a man who had been in my bedroom with my wife.
Now I could hear his voice without wanting to argue about the moment forever.
That did not mean I had forgiven him.
It meant I had stopped organizing my entire life around what he deserved.
I went outside and checked the garden beds I had begun building beside the porch.
The soil needed turning before the next rain.
I picked up a shovel and began working until the evening air cooled.
CHAPTER 31: An Unsent Complaint
A clerk in the county archive discovered an unopened folder during a routine inventory of older administrative boxes.
The folder contained a draft complaint prepared by Evelyn Lawson and dated shortly before the school’s final closure.
It had been filed among unrelated correspondence rather than in the trust’s permanent records.
The clerk contacted Naomi after noticing that the draft referred to missing children whose names appeared in the current review.
The pages described Evelyn’s attempts to speak with families before residents were transferred.
She wrote that staff had been given inconsistent instructions about who could authorize releases.
One paragraph described a child being told to pack a suitcase without any explanation of where she would sleep that night.
Evelyn did not identify Richard as the person responsible for the transfer.
She asked the board to clarify whether its attorney had approved the procedures and whether a supervising agency had reviewed them.
