I think maybe that's why he kept waving. Norah sat with that a long while after the call ended, thinking about her father standing on this same porch every morning, watching a street slowly losing families he cared about, unable to do more than wave and keep writing down what he saw, hoping someday it would matter to someone who could finally act on it. It had mattered just later than either of them would have chosen. Norah spent most of that afternoon on the phone. First with Ferris, then with Bishop, then with a records clerk from the county, who wanted to confirm the exact dates on their father's original complaints.
Vivien spent the same hours walking the neighborhood, knocking on doors that had stayed closed for years, asking gentle, careful questions of people who'd never expected anyone to ask them anything at all. By evening, the two sisters found themselves back on the porch, alone for the first time all day. The street finally quiet again. After a day that had felt like it stretched twice as long as any ordinary Wednesday should. He'd have hated all the attention, Norah said, watching the last of the daylight fade over Bell Street.
He'd have hated the attention, Vivien agreed. But not the outcome. They sat together for a long while without talking. The way only people who've shared 36 years of the same vase and the same childhood bedroom really know how to sit together. Somewhere down the block, a screen door creaked open and shut.
A dog barked twice, then settled. The ordinary sounds of an ordinary evening, returning slowly to a street that had spent 3 days being anything but. What happens to the house now? Vivien finally asked. After we go back, Norah hadn't let herself think about that question yet.
Not really. Not with everything else demanding her attention over the last 3 days. I don't know, she admitted. I know I don't want to sell it. Not after all this.
Neither do I, Vivien said. But we can't exactly commute from here either. Maybe we don't have to decide tonight, Norah said. Maybe we just decide to keep it, figure out the rest later. Vivien smiled, small and tired, but real.
Dad would say that's exactly the kind of answer that gets a person through a hard week and straight into a harder decision 6 months from now. Dad would be right, Norah said. But I'm choosing to let future us handle that particular problem. They both laughed, quiet and genuine. The first laugh either of them had managed that wasn't tangled up with exhaustion or grief, or the sharp edge of adrenaline finally wearing off.
Over the following weeks, the investigation widened well past anything. Either sister had expected that first night on the porch. Federal prosecutors built their case slowly, methodically, the same way Norah and Vivien had built theirs, one confirmed detail at a time. Voss's decade of quiet intimidation, once exposed to daylight, turned out to have touched more families across Milport than anyone in the department had ever wanted acknowledged. Some had moved away rather than fight.