Eleanor was very still beside her son.
Gerald had taken another small step back.
He was now standing slightly apart from the family group, his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground.
Nathan turned back to me.
The hardness in his face was still there, but something underneath it was beginning to loosen.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Right now?” I said.
“I want to leave.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I held the envelope at my side.
“You want to know if I’m going to use this.
You want to know if I’m going to make this expensive and public and damaging to the career you just spent six years building.” I looked at him for a long moment.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I walked away.
Daniel fell into step beside me.
We crossed the courtyard without speaking.
The crowd had thinned slightly — families drifting toward cars, graduates taking photographs near the entrance arch.
Nobody was watching us.
Or if they were, they had the decency not to show it.
We reached the parking lot.
I stopped beside my car, a ten-year-old Honda that had needed new brake pads for three months and that I had been putting off replacing because the money kept going elsewhere.
“What are you going to do?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know yet.” I unlocked the car and set the envelope on the passenger seat.
“Thank you.
For all of it.
For coming to me today.”
“I should have come sooner.”
“Maybe.
But you came.” I looked at him.
“Cassandra’s sister — is she all right?”
“She’s shaken.
She feels guilty, even though she didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mia.”
“Tell Mia she did the right thing.”
Daniel nodded.
He started to turn away, then stopped.
“There’s one more thing I didn’t mention earlier.
I didn’t want to put everything on you at once.”
I waited.
“The hospital where Nathan has his residency placement,” Daniel said.
“Mercy General.”
“That’s where Cassandra works.”
