“And your father?”
“It’s just us.”
I let her sit with me a while longer. Then I told her I had somewhere to be, and I watched, from a careful distance, as she walked home to a small apartment above a laundromat near the bus depot.
That night, I told my lawyer to draw up new papers.
“Name?” he asked.
He called me back the next morning.
“Lily,” I said. “Twelve years old. Lives with her mother above the laundromat near the bus depot. Her school uniform had a crest from the academy near the store. Run the background. I want everything clean.”
He called me back the next morning.
“Sir, there’s a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“The mother. She works as a night cleaner at your corporate headquarters. And Derek has been building a file against her.”
I closed my eyes. Derek. Of course it was Derek.
