Chapter 8 - THE APARTMENT WITH OUR OWN KEY
The apartment smelled of new paint and somebody else's cooking. It had two bedrooms, a narrow balcony, and an air-conditioner that clattered like it was trying to escape through the wall. The children loved it almost immediately because the bedrooms shared a connecting door.
We made our own rules on the first evening. Shoes belonged on a mat by the entrance. Everybody could choose one picture for the living-room wall. If we were worried about something, we could say it at dinner without somebody declaring the topic inconvenient. Noah chose a photograph of Daniel fixing a bicycle. Lily chose Eleanor's ridiculous crowned hummingbird. I put both images above our scratched secondhand couch. The apartment looked nothing like Nathan's mansion, and for a few minutes that didn't feel like a loss.
“Now we can talk without walking down a hallway,” Lily announced.
“Revolutionary,” Noah said.
I put our forty-seven cents in a small glass jar on the kitchen shelf. I had kept the coins after the hotel gave us our first meal. They were a reminder of what desperation could make me consider and of what I never wanted the children to believe about their own worth.
Our days slowly developed a rhythm. I dropped the children at school, worked at the food cooperative, picked them up, and cooked dinner that didn't arrive beneath a silver lid. Some evenings Eleanor called to hear Lily report the latest adventures of Captain Fluff. On those calls, Nathan stayed in the background unless one of the children asked to see him.
I spoke to him only about practical matters. He respected that boundary so consistently that it sometimes made me angrier. I wanted something simple enough to reject—a demand, a boast, an attempt to buy me back. He gave me none of those things.
Rosa Mendoza met us at Nora's office on a Thursday. She was in her late fifties, with a scar on her right hand and an expression that suggested she'd spent years deciding whether the truth was worth the danger.
“I worked dispatch at Canyon Gate,” she said. “Your husband wasn't our night supervisor by choice. He took over after the scheduled man walked out. Daniel was the only one who kept reporting the broken emergency exits.”
I remembered him coming home tired and angry, saying that somebody was going to get hurt. I had told him to look for another job. He'd said he couldn't abandon the other workers while the management ignored the reports.
Rosa opened a folder. Inside were carbon copies of shift logs, delivery manifests, and a maintenance request bearing Daniel's signature. The east exit was recorded as unusable three times in the same week. A fourth entry ordered staff to keep that area sealed during a late-night shipment, allegedly for security reasons.
“Who issued the order?” Nora asked.
“Lawrence Voss forwarded it. I never saw who originated it.”
Rosa took out an old phone wrapped in a plastic bag. The screen was cracked, but the device still turned on. She had saved one final voicemail from Daniel, recorded shortly before the fire.
“Rosa, I'm checking that east door again. The alarm system's been bypassed, and there are drums by the loading bay that aren't on the inventory. If I can't get somebody to listen, I'm calling the fire marshal in the morning.”
My vision blurred. For two years I'd heard Daniel's name spoken as a warning: the careless man who'd caused his own death. Now I heard his voice again, doing exactly what I'd always known he would do—trying to keep other people safe.
“Why didn't you come forward?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Rosa flinched. “I tried. I sent copies to the insurance company. Their investigator said the originals were missing. Then a man came to my house and told me my grandson's scholarship could disappear if I kept talking.”
I apologized immediately. She didn't owe me an explanation for being frightened. We sat together until her hands stopped shaking. Nora arranged secure handling of the records and asked Rosa whether she wanted her own attorney before making an official statement. She did.
After the meeting, I sat in my car for a long time. The paperwork could help repair Daniel's name. It couldn't bring him back. It also didn't absolve Nathan of ignoring evidence his company should have taken seriously.
I called him anyway.
“Rosa has a voicemail from Daniel,” I said. “She's cooperating with the investigation.”
Nathan was silent. Then he answered, “I'm glad she kept it.”
“I'm telling you because it may implicate Victor. Not because we're okay.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I'm starting to. A little too late.”
That weekend Victor's version of the story appeared online. An anonymous account posted that Daniel Parker had deliberately disabled warehouse alarms to conceal inventory theft. The post included our children's names and claimed I had married Nathan to blackmail the Brooks family.
I nearly replied before remembering every ugly public argument I'd watched trap people into making their children part of the spectacle. Instead, I sent screenshots to Nora and reported the inclusion of the children's information. The school adjusted pickup procedures with our consent, and I turned my phone facedown.
Noah found me staring at the kitchen wall.
“Is this about Dad?”
“Yes.”
“People at school said he made the fire.”
My heart lurched. “What did you say?”
“I said they weren't there.”
He shrugged, trying to look brave. Then he started crying. I held him for a long time, wishing I could build a world in which truth arrived before rumors.
That evening, Nathan's lawyer sent Nora copies of additional audit records. In an accompanying note Nathan had instructed Lydia to provide everything that might be relevant, including evidence of his own decision to lift the shipment suspension.
I wanted the files to make me stop caring about him. Instead, they made me confront a more difficult possibility: that somebody could behave badly, admit it, and still matter to you.
May you like
Then Marco called. Victor had dismissed two drivers without warning, cleared out a private storage facility, and scheduled an unsupervised convoy to cross the state line at midnight.
Nathan had informed the investigators. What they found in those trucks might finally connect the fire to the missing shipments.
