“Your father needed people to believe you couldn’t understand what was happening.”
“Because I might notice?”
“Yes.”
He adjusted one fork near the base.
“Then he should have used different numbers.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Ethan smiled too.
A week later, Adrian’s lawyer sent a request for unsupervised contact.
Attached was a letter addressed to Ethan.
I told Ethan he could read it, save it, or refuse it.
He looked at the envelope for a long time.
“Does he want to see me,” he asked, “or does he want me to forgive him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“No,” I said.
“They aren’t.”
He placed the unopened letter in a drawer and returned to his tower.
For years, Adrian had believed power meant controlling the room, the money, the witnesses, and the story people were allowed to tell.
Ethan defeated him by noticing what was already there.
I defeated him by refusing to look away.
When the final custody order arrived, I closed the last legal folder and placed it on a shelf.
Ethan was at the table, balancing the final fork.
The tower held.
So did we.
