Chapter 16: The Cameras

At twenty to six on Friday evening, Jonah stood outside Hester Quillan's office and counted down from five.

He counted at every door. Today he did it on purpose, to hear himself steady.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

He knocked.

"Come in, Jonah."

She sat behind her desk in a black silk dress and pearls, with her reading glasses on their cord.

The gala was an hour and twenty minutes away. The bottom drawer was shut, and the fern had been watered.

"I knew you would," she said. "I told Dale. Jonah always comes home."

"I'm here to work," Jonah said.

"Of course you are."

"I'll stand where you tell me. I'll keep the four behind the white door steady, since they trust me."

Hester took off her glasses and looked at him for a long time.

"And Maren?"

"She'll come at seven. She won't leave those girls."

"No," Hester said softly. "She won't. That's the loveliest thing about her."

He did not let his face move.

For two years he had watched this woman be kind to people she was about to cut open.

He knew her tells now.

She smiled most when she was weighing something.

She was smiling.

"You quit in front of thirty people," she said.

"I did."

"I was very hurt."

"I know."

"What do you want, Jonah? Truly."

"To go back to work and not think about it."

It was the first lie he had told her to her face, and he watched it land.

Hester opened a drawer, not the bottom one, and took out a grey lanyard with a new card on it.

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