Do you ever wonder what he'd tell us to do next if he could? Norah thought about it. Really thought about it before she answered. Not the quick reflex answer, but the true one. The one that came from somewhere she'd learned to trust a long time ago.
I think he'd tell us to keep doing exactly what we're doing. Slow, careful, honest. He'd tell us not to rush at just because rushing would feel better. That sounds exhausting. It is, Norah said.
That's probably why it works. Vivien laughed softly, the sound thin with fatigue, but real all the same. Outside somewhere down the block, a screen door creaked open and shut, an ordinary sound from an ordinary house, utterly indifferent to everything that had happened three doors down. Life went on that way sometimes. Norah had noticed, running its quiet errands right alongside the biggest things a person would ever live through.
Neither one asking the others permission. They stayed at the table a while longer, not working now, just sitting. Two sisters and a stack of papers that had waited a very long time to be found in a house that had waited just as long to finally tell its own story out loud. Tomorrow would bring whatever it brought. Tonight, that was enough.
The house phone rang just before midnight. Vivien answered on the second ring, her voice steady despite the hour. Whitfield residence. This is Lieutenant Voss, " the voice on the other end said, calm and unhurried, as if it were the middle of the afternoon and not nearly 12. "I'm calling to inform you that I will be at your residence tomorrow morning at 9:00 with formal paperwork regarding evidence tampering charges.
Both of you are required to be present. " Vivien glanced at Norah across the kitchen table, who nodded once. "We'll be here, Lieutenant, " Vivien said, and hung up without waiting for a reply. Norah set down the mug of tea she'd been nursing for the last hour. "He's not wasting any time.
He thinks he doesn't need to, " Vivien said. "As far as he knows, we've got nothing left. Just our word against his, and he spent his whole career learning how that argument usually ends. " "Then let's make sure he's wrong about that, " Norah said. They spent the rest of that night the way they'd spent most of the last two days.
At the kitchen table, papers spread out under the hanging light their father had installed himself 30 years back. Still working exactly the way he'd left it. Vivien built a timeline on the legal pad, cross-referencing every video file against every written complaint, matching timestamps to dates to names. Around 1:00 in the morning, Norah made a call of her own, one she'd been putting off since the previous evening. Deputy Director Alan Ferris answered on the first ring, which told her he hadn't been asleep either or had trained himself to answer like a man who never truly was.