Chapter 11: Taking the Room Back

Honora looked at her son for a long time.

"You're thirty-two years old," she said, very evenly.

"You have never held a job I didn't find you. Your trust is mine until your birthday."

"Then keep it."

"You'll have nothing."

"I know." Preston stood up from the stool. "I'd like to find out what that's like."

I picked up my phone and stopped the recording.

Honora watched my thumb touch the screen.

"Friday, Claire," she said. "The statement or the photographs. Think carefully about who you are."

"I'm thinking about it," I said. "I'll let you know."

I packed one suitcase in eleven minutes and walked out the front door without looking back.

Ronan was waiting at the curb in his car.

He hadn't been told to. He had simply stayed two blocks away since noon.

I got in, and I played him the recording from the first word to the last.

He listened to Honora's voice say that she had picked me because nobody would come looking.

His hands stayed on the wheel at ten and two, and the knuckles went white.

When it ended he said nothing for a full minute.

"I was the target," he said at last. "And you were the bait."

"Ronan."

"She built every month of your marriage so that I would put my hands on you. And I did."

"You put your hands on me because I asked you to."

"I know that," he said.

He stared through the windshield.

"But I walked in exactly where she aimed me. I need you to understand that before you decide anything."

"Decide what?"

"Whether you can stand to look at me. I'm the reason you were put through it."

I turned in my seat.

"Listen to me," I said. "She built a year of starving me. She didn't build the way you took my wrist in that elevator and let it go."

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