Chapter 8 - THE HOUSE AVA LEFT BEHIND
Maria and Lily could not safely return to their apartment.
Ethan offered a suite inside Harrington Tower.
Maria refused.
“I will not live where Sebastian controls the security system.”
Ethan accepted the answer.
Rebecca arranged a protected apartment through federal investigators.
Maria entered the temporary home carrying one suitcase.
Lily looked around the plain living room.
“Where is the cloud?”
“Far away.”
“Mr. Ethan lives in the cloud.”
Maria began unpacking.
“Mr. Ethan has his own problems.”
Lily placed Mr. Buttons on the sofa.
“He needs us.”
Maria closed the suitcase.
“No.”
“He needed an inhaler.”
“You gave it to him.”
“That does not make us responsible for the rest of his life.”
Lily considered this.
“He is still sad.”
Maria sat beside her daughter.
“Sad grown-ups have to learn how to help themselves too.”
Later that evening, Ethan arrived with the blue notebook.
He remained near the doorway until Maria invited him inside.
“I found something in Ava’s ledger.”
He placed a page on the table.
It contained an address on Kedzie Avenue.
Maria recognized it.
Their mother had rented a small house there after Ava died.
The family stayed only six months.
“Why would Ava write the address before we moved there?”
“She may have arranged the house.”
They traveled there the next morning.
The property had been abandoned.
The current owner allowed federal investigators to search.
Inside a bedroom wall, they found a narrow metal box.
It contained Ava’s scarf, a second letter, and an old digital recorder.
The second letter was addressed to Maria.
Mari,
If I cannot return, protect Mom.
Do not spend your life fighting the Harringtons.
Build something they cannot purchase.
Do not teach your children that powerful people are automatically cruel.
Teach them that power reveals what a person has chosen to become.
Maria read the letter twice.
Ava had written about children.
She had imagined a future she never reached.
Ethan picked up the scarf.
He remembered buying it from a street vendor during their first winter together.
Ava had worn it even after the fabric began fraying.
Maria watched him hold it.
“She waited at the station until almost midnight.”
Ethan looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“My mother found a parking receipt in Ava’s coat.”
“Why didn’t she call me?”
“She did.”
“Your father answered.”
Conrad told Sofia that Ethan knew everything.
He said Ethan chose the company.
May you like
Both families had spent eleven years believing the other side had abandoned them.
The lie had worked because pain made every person retreat separately.
