Chapter 6

The courthouse was a sandstone building with a clock tower that chimed in the morning light, and Nadia sat on a bench outside its main entrance at eight fifteen, the tote on her lap, watching the street.

She had come alone.

Melia was at school. That had been the hardest part of the morning, the part where she had to swallow the urge to keep her daughter close, the part where she had to trust that the system holding them both was about to do something right. Melia had not complained. She had walked through the front gate with her backpack on, her yellow raincoat bright in the morning sun, and she had not looked back.

That was what held Nadia together, that small un-looked-back.

At eight twenty, a car pulled into the courthouse lot. Mr. Bledsoe got out, the beige folder under his arm, his grey cardigan buttoned over his white shirt. He did not look at her. He walked past the bench, into the building, and did not pause.

At eight thirty, the courier arrived.

It was a man she recognized from the pickup line — a wide-shouldered man with Corinne's hair color, Corinne's posture, Corinne's phone in his hand. He walked into the courthouse with the confident stride of a man who had been told he was the only one who knew the real plan. Nadia watched him go through the glass doors, and she saw the white slip of paper in his hand, the one that was supposed to change the courthouse's meeting room.

It did not matter. The meeting was not in the changed room. The meeting was in the room it had always been in, and the courier was about to have a very confusing morning.

At eight forty-five, Nadia walked into the building herself.

She passed through the metal detector, the security guard who knew her name, the clerk who looked up from her desk and then looked down again, too fast. She took the stairs to the second floor and walked down a corridor lined with wooden doors and brass numbers. The door to the meeting room was at the end of the corridor, and outside it, standing with her back to Nadia, was Corinne.

She was wearing the cream blazer. Of course she was wearing the cream blazer. Her phone was in her hand, face-up, and she was scrolling through it with a smile that was fixed on her face like a mask nailed in place.

"Corinne."

Corinne turned. The smile flickered, then settled back into place.