had made, the table she had set, the hour Ryan had come home. The word he had used. The suitcase. The porch.
Mrs. Parker wrote as she listened, her handwriting small and precise, the same handwriting Claire had seen on audit memos for a decade.
4:30 A.M. Demand made with child present. Left with personal items and documentation.
She wrote Ryan’s full name and underlined it twice.
The legal pad, the pen, the steady scratching of notes. Something in Claire’s chest unknotted slightly. Not because the problem was smaller than it had been twenty minutes ago. But because the old rhythm had come back so quickly and so completely that she could feel herself standing inside it again. The part of her that organized chaos into timelines. The part that named things accurately and did not flinch from what the names implied.
Mrs. Parker looked up from the
