Chapter 4 - THE HOUSE THAT LEARNED HER ROUTE
On Wednesday morning, Adeline bought a replacement toothbrush at a pharmacy on Airline Drive and cried in the parking lot.
She had not cried when she found the insurance forms. She had not cried when she saw the memorial program. She had not cried when Juliette Landry described being pushed out of nursing by evidence she believed somebody had manufactured. The toothbrush undid her because buying it meant admitting she might never go home again.
The brush was blue. Preston always bought green ones because he believed toothbrushes should match the bathroom. She stood looking at the blue plastic through its packaging until a cashier asked whether she needed a bag.
“No,” she said. “I'm all right.”
Neither statement was exactly true.
Back at the duplex, Naomi had news. The nurse's clinical chart from March 14 had been preserved for review through the hospice agency's authorized process, including an audit history that showed when entries were created. The administrator had also agreed to retain relevant records while allegations of document misuse were investigated. The chart could not prove who forged the affidavit, but it contradicted the claim that Adeline had witnessed an alert, oriented patient sign a legal instrument.
Naomi had also secured a preliminary conversation with the attorney for Emil Boudreaux's daughter, Evelyn. She wanted to meet Adeline, but only after Naomi prepared the ground rules. Evelyn had spent months hearing that her father knew exactly what he was doing, that his daughter was simply disappointed not to inherit more. She deserved something firmer than a frightened nurse's suspicions.
“Can she get his house back?” Adeline asked.
“That's what her civil action is about. We can't promise the result. But now there's a legitimate reason to examine the documents.”
“And my deposition?”
“The court can be asked for protections around the testimony. I intend to request them.”
Adeline looked at the calendar. Friday—the date in two days—had no appointment written on it. She disliked its blankness.
The extended laboratory report from Saturday had not arrived. The physician had explained that such tests took time and might still prove inconclusive. Adeline understood the science. She did not understand why the absence of a convenient answer made her feel like the woman at the bottom of the stairs all over again.
Camille found her checking the lock on the back door for the third time.
“You can't do that every five minutes,” Camille said.
“I know.”
“Then come sit.”
They sat at the kitchen table with stale crackers and the brown leather notebook between them. Adeline told Camille about the day she had first met Preston in the funeral home waiting room. She described the crooked magnolia prints, the water cooler, and how he had noticed nobody came to sit beside her.
“He made me feel seen,” she said.
Camille listened.
“Now I wonder whether he was there because he knew my grandmother had died. Whether somebody told him I had a house and no family left. I hate that I wonder.”
“You don't have to rewrite every decent minute into a lie,” Camille said. “The truth is bad enough.”
Adeline felt tears threatening again. “I loved him.”
“I know.”
“He sat on the bathroom floor with me after I lost those two patients.”
“I know.”
“Why doesn't that make any difference?”
“It makes a difference to what you lost,” Camille replied. “It doesn't excuse what he did.”
That was the closest thing to permission Adeline had received all week: permission to grieve a marriage without returning to it.
At noon, Naomi arranged a secure meeting with Dileia in the back office of a church outreach center. Dileia arrived carrying a canvas grocery bag and wearing sunglasses she did not remove until the door was locked. Her hands had red marks around the wrists from gripping the steering wheel too hard.
“I've been staying with a friend,” she said. “Don't ask where.”
“We won't,” Naomi assured her. “You are free to speak to independent counsel before giving us anything.”
Dileia nodded, then looked at Adeline. “Mom always said you were soft. I thought she meant kind. I didn't know she meant useful.”
Adeline sat down slowly.
“When Preston brought you home the first time, they already knew where you worked. They knew you were caring for old people with money. I heard them talk about it.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
Adeline calculated the years. She had been engaged for only a few months. Dileia had come into the kitchen one night while Preston and Adeline were making terrible pasta and laughed until they gave her a bowl. That memory had become another room in the house she could no longer safely enter.
Dileia slid a small notebook onto the table. It was not the folder from Karen's cabinet. It was her own record, maintained during the year she had helped reconcile expenses for her mother's charitable foundation.
“There were payments to Halloway Administrative Services,” she said. “Consulting fees. I thought they were for managing donations. But the amounts matched transactions at Preston's firm. It wasn't a charity. It was a way to move money.”
Naomi examined the pages without taking possession yet. “Did you create these notes yourself?”
“Yes. I can tell you when, and I can tell you which statements I used.”
“Can you obtain your copies lawfully?”
“I already have copies of records I was authorized to keep for the accounting work.”
“Good. Don't access any new accounts without permission.”
Dileia looked almost offended. “I know that now.”
Adeline asked whether she had known about the tea.
“Not at the June party,” Dileia said. “I knew about Saturday when I saw Mom switch your glass before dinner. I couldn't prove what she'd done. I saw her put something beside the pitcher, and when I asked, she told me to mind my own business.”
“Why didn't you stop her?”
The younger woman's face collapsed. “I was scared of them.”
Adeline wanted to tell her it was fine. It wasn't. She kept her voice level. “Are you still?”
“Yes.”
“Then let that be the last thing you help them do.”
Dileia nodded and wiped her face with her sleeve. In the silence that followed, the outreach center's air conditioner rattled above them like loose coins in a tin.
Dileia finally pulled a photocopied program from her bag. The magnolia on the cover matched the photograph. Inside were prepared tributes from Preston, Karen, and several representatives of a hospice fundraiser. The page bearing the date had been left blank on the original draft, but the production notes scheduled press outreach for early autumn.
Naomi photographed the packet. “This is chilling,” she said. “It is not yet proof of homicide. We need to keep those distinctions clear.”
“There's more.” Dileia's voice lowered. “Preston's been meeting with a man named Harlan Pike. Pike used to handle claims investigations for an insurance firm. Now he does private security.”
Adeline remembered the photograph taken outside the police station.
Dileia noticed. “He drives a black pickup with a broken left taillight.”
Adeline opened her phone. The threatening image had been taken from the driver's side of a large vehicle; a reflected strip of red plastic appeared at the edge of the frame.
Naomi leaned closer. “Maybe. We let an investigator examine the image.”
At the end of the meeting, Dileia took Adeline's hands. “Mom told me this would be easier if I thought of you as unstable. She said you'd ruin all of us if you testified. I tried to believe her.”
“And now?”
“Now I keep remembering that you came to my graduation when Preston didn't. You stayed through every speech. You even took pictures of me with the principal after I complained about the ceremony.”
Adeline squeezed her fingers. “You mattered.”
Dileia bent her head and wept.
On the drive back, Camille noticed a black pickup two cars behind them. Its left taillight was broken. She said nothing until they passed the turn for the duplex. The pickup followed.
Camille kept driving. She turned into the parking area of a busy urgent-care clinic, pulled up beneath the cameras, and called Naomi. The pickup slowed across the street, then moved on.
They did not return to the duplex. Leon arranged for them to use a friend's apartment closer to the river. The threat had become too direct for sentimental attachments to an address.
Adeline arrived there at seven. She washed her face, ate half a sandwich, and sat beside a window overlooking a small parking lot. The apartment smelled of cumin and laundry soap. Somebody upstairs was practicing trumpet, badly but enthusiastically.
Her phone vibrated. It was a message from Naomi: Rafael Maro's lawyer had agreed to a meeting next week. They wanted an exact accounting of the trust dispute. Naomi added that the man had specifically asked whether the nurse was safe.
Adeline stared at the words for a long time.
Then another message arrived, this time from an unfamiliar number.
I CAN SEE YOUR LIGHT ON.
She looked through the blinds.
May you like
Across the parking lot, beside a dark sedan, someone lifted a phone to show its illuminated screen.
Before she could move, the building's fire alarm began to scream.
