Chapter 14: Eli's Night

Eli's POV

I wrote the letter at the desk in Frank Prescott's study, on Frank Prescott's paper, with Frank Prescott's pen.

It took four lines.

I resign as trustee of the Prescott estate, effective at once.

I cannot protect Hannah and answer for what I did at the same time.

I signed it and read it back and hated every word.

Upstairs, the house had gone quiet.

Hannah had gone up at ten with a folder of Camille's statements, and the light under her door had stayed on.

I did not knock.

I put the letter in my jacket and took my keys from the hall table.

It was almost midnight when I reached Queens.

Joan Danner's kitchen light was on, as I had known it would be.

She opened the door in a dressing gown with her silver hair flat on one side.

"I wondered when," she said.

"I'm sorry for the hour."

"Come in, Eli. You never knew what hour was."

She put the kettle on.

The green ledgers were still on the shelf over the stove, eleven of them, in a row.

I sat at the table where I had cried once already, at twenty-six, over a man's signature.

"Bryce put my name in his petition," I said. "With the notice I signed. He said you kept it."

"I did keep it." She set a cup in front of me. "In a shoebox, next to the ledgers."

"And Bryce?"

"He took that shoebox in March. He said he wanted to read his father's handwriting."

"You didn't know?"

"I found the shelf empty in April and told myself I'd moved it." She sat down heavily.

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