Chapter 9: What the Girls Already Knew
Victor Renn was formally charged on a Thursday.
Hannah read about it in a brief message from Adrienne Cole rather than in the news, because Cole was careful and because the public filing came two days after the private machinery had already finished moving.
Renn's three holding companies were frozen.
Dr.
Faro's extradition was filed the same week.
Stokes had provided a full statement in exchange for a reduced charge, and his statement, combined with Cara's audio recording, removed any remaining ambiguity about what had been arranged and by whom.
Cole called Hannah directly once, to tell her that Cara's video had been formally entered into the record.
"It was the clearest piece of testimony I've ever received," Cole said.
"She knew exactly what she was doing."
"She always did," Hannah said.
"She just didn't always have the time to finish it."
"She finished it," Cole said.
"She just needed someone to deliver it."
After the call, Hannah sat in the kitchen of the townhouse for a while without doing anything in particular.
The townhouse had become, in the weeks since Red Hook, a place she moved through with increasing ease.
She had not planned that.
It had happened the way things happen when three small people require your presence at specific hours and do not accept substitutes.
Lily had decided, sometime in the second week, that Hannah was responsible for breakfast.
Not the nanny.
Not Dominic.
Hannah.
She would appear at the kitchen doorway at seven-fifteen precisely and stand there until Hannah noticed her.
Grace had decided that Hannah was the correct person for reading aloud, specifically the books Grace had already memorized, which she followed along with a focused expression that suggested she was checking for errors.
Emma had decided that Hannah's shoulder was the correct place to fall asleep during afternoon quiet time, and communicated this by simply climbing onto Hannah and going still.
Hannah had stopped pretending any of this was temporary.
Dominic found her in the kitchen that Thursday afternoon.
"Cole called me too," he said.
"I know."
He poured coffee and sat across from her.
They had developed, over the past weeks, a way of being in the same room that was comfortable without being defined.
He had not pushed.
She had not retreated.
They had found a middle distance that worked, and both of them seemed to understand, without saying it, that the middle distance was not permanent.
"Renn's lawyer is already filing motions," he said.
"Cole said she expected that."
"She'll hold."
"I know she will."
Dominic looked at his coffee cup.
"I want to tell you something," he said.
"All right."
"When Cara d*ed, I didn't know how to be what the girls needed.
I knew how to protect them.
I knew how to provide for them.
But they wouldn't speak, and I didn't know if that was grief or something else, and I felt—" He stopped.
"Helpless," Hannah said.
"Yes." He looked up.
"I have not felt that way often in my life.
I didn't know what to do with it."
"You kept looking for answers."
"I kept moving.
That's what I know how to do." He paused.
"The afternoon at Bellafonte — I wasn't there by accident.
I'd been taking them to different places, different environments, different people.
Trying to find whatever it was they were waiting for." He looked at her steadily.
"I didn't know it was a person."
Hannah was quiet for a moment.
"Cara knew," she said.
"Yes."
"She trusted you to find me."
"She trusted the girls to find you." Something shifted in his expression.
"She was right."
Hannah looked at the table.
"I came to New York to survive," she said.
"After my father d*ed, after the bills, I just needed to get through each week.
I wasn't looking for anything."
"I know."
"I wasn't ready for any of this."
"No one is," Dominic said.
"That's not how it works."
From upstairs came the sound of small feet, and then Lily's voice calling Hannah's name — not Mama, just Hannah, which she had started doing recently with the easy confidence of someone who no longer needed to establish the relationship.
Hannah pushed her chair back.
"I need to go see what she wants."
"Hannah."
She stopped.
Dominic looked at her across the table.
"Thank you," he said.
"For not running."
She thought about the alley behind Bellafonte.
The black SUV.
The rain.
The moment she had considered screaming and hadn't, because a small child was crying and something in her had moved toward that sound before she could think.
"I almost did," she said.
"I know." A pause.
"I'm glad you didn't."
She went upstairs.
Lily was in the hallway with a book under each arm and an expression of complete certainty that Hannah would sort out whatever needed sorting.
Hannah took the books.
"Which one first?" she asked.
Lily pointed.
Hannah sat down on the floor in the hallway, and Lily climbed into her lap, and Grace appeared from the playroom and settled against Hannah's side, and Emma came last, padding out in her socks and fitting herself into the remaining space with the calm efficiency of someone completing a puzzle.
Hannah opened the book.
She read the first page.
Grace turned to page two before she finished, because Grace already knew how it ended and wanted to get there.
May you like
Hannah laughed.
It came out easier than she expected.
