Chapter 8: What Dara Carried
The police came to Heloise's flat four days later.
Gerald called me while I was at the park with Thora.
She was on the swings, pumping her legs hard, trying to go higher.
I stepped a few feet away and kept her in sight.
"The financial crimes unit executed a search this morning," Gerald said.
"They found additional records at her flat.
It appears the transfers to your accounts were not the only ones.
There are two other families — both men who lost spouses in the last three years, both of whom she offered to help during their grief." He paused.
"She had a system, Daniel.
You were not the first."
I watched Thora swing.
She was laughing now, head tipped back, hair flying.
"What happens next?" I asked.
"She'll be formally charged.
Her lawyer has already been in contact with the Crown Prosecution Service.
The child welfare documentation has been filed — that adds a separate dimension that her lawyer is very unhappy about." Another pause.
"She called my office this morning.
Before the police arrived."
"What did she say?"
"She asked if there was still time to reach an agreement."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her that my client was at the park with his daughter and that I would pass along the message." A beat.
"I've passed it along."
"Tell her no."
"I already did," Gerald said.
"I just wanted you to hear it."
---
Dara came for dinner that Friday.
She brought a bottle of wine she said Nora had once recommended and a small stuffed rabbit for Thora, who accepted it with great seriousness and immediately introduced it to her bear.
We ate at the kitchen table — the same table where Thora had stood in that uniform eight days ago.
I had thought about eating somewhere else.
Then I decided not to.
This was our table.
It had always been our table.
After Thora went to bed, Dara and I sat with our wine and the quiet.
"She told everyone I was unstable," Dara said.
"After my divorce, when I first started noticing things.
She called Nora's other friends one by one.
By the time I realized what she'd done, no one was returning my calls." She turned the glass in her hands.
"I spent two years thinking I had imagined it."
"You hadn't."
"No." She looked up.
"Nora knew.
Toward the end, she knew.
She told me once — this was maybe six weeks before she died — she said, *Dara, if anything happens to me, watch Daniel.
Watch Thora.
Don't let her near them.* I thought she meant emotionally.
That she was worried about grief, about Heloise inserting herself." She stopped.
"I didn't understand what she actually meant until it was already happening."
The kitchen was warm.
Outside, the street was quiet.
"She was trying to protect us," I said.
"Even then."
"Yes." Dara set down her glass.
"She was."
May you like
We sat with that for a while.
There was nothing else to say about it, and we both knew it, and neither of us tried.
