Chapter 5
I opened the email with the same calm I had once used to open exam results.
A file downloaded. Pages of records, then photographs.
The first photo: a girl, maybe eight or nine, standing in front of a restaurant. Her clothes were too big. Her face was thin.
The second: the same girl, older now—seventeen or eighteen—lifting a garbage bag in a back alley. Her hair was lank. Her arms were covered in bruises.
The third: a close-up of an arm. Old and new, layered like she had never stopped being hit. A cigarette burn the size of a dime on the inside of the elbow.
*Name: Nora. Works in a Chinatown restaurant in Los Angeles. No legal status. Now lives in a basement room. No windows.*
*Celestine Sinclaircollects most of her wages through an intermediary.*
I did not cry.
I sat very still in the dark while the small, hot, brilliant rage that had been waiting under my breastbone for the last seventy-two hours finally bloomed all the way out into my hands.
Eighteen years.
Someone had been hitting my daughter for eighteen years, and the woman who had been wearing my Cartier emeralds at my dinner table on Sunday was the one who had been pocketing her wages.
I had raised Celeste's son. I had clothed him, fed him, paid for his school, loved him like my own.
And my daughter—my real daughter—had been thrown away.
I closed the email. I gathered the letters, the photograph, everything from the metal box, and put them in my bag.
Then I walked out of the attic, down the stairs, and out of the old house.
In the car, I just sat there, gripping the steering wheel, until my knuckles went white.
Then I made one calls.
To Adrian Cole.
"I'm going to bring my daughter home."
There was a pause on the line. “What do you need me to do for you?”
"I need a plane ticket that none of them know about."
"5:42 a.m. Direct to LAX. And then I'll have a car waiting at LAX. Don't go into Chinatown alone."
I hung up and finally let myself cry.
Not for long.
I had a lot of work to do.
.....
I didn’t sleep on the flight to Los Angeles.
The investigator’s file sat open on my tray table. Page after page of a life I should have been part of.
**Subject: SINCLAIR, NORA. Female. DOB: June 21.**
**Place of birth:** Ashford General, Ashford City. (*Records of original maternity ward closed; archive lost in 2009 fire.*)
**Recorded guardian, age 0–1:** SINCLAIR, CELESTE.
**Recorded relocation:** Los Angeles, California. November of birth year.
**Education:** Public school district 17, Los Angeles. Attendance erratic ages 8–13. Withdrew at 16.
**Employment, ages 8 to present:**
- Dishwasher, two restaurants, off the books
- Laundry, one dry cleaner, off the books
- Current: prep cook / dishwasher, *The Hill Garden*, 815 Hill Street, Chinatown. Lives on premises. Underground room behind walk-in cooler. No window. No lock from inside.
**Wages:** $4.50/hour, cash. Ninety percent collected monthly by intermediary on behalf of C. Sinclair, deposited into offshore account.
**Medical:** Three documented ER visits. Broken wrist, age 11. Concussion, age 14. Lacerations to back of shoulder, age 16, twenty-two stitches, signed out against medical advice.
**Police record:** None as offender. One filed report at age 12, alleging assault by guardian. Withdrawn within 48 hours.
I closed the file before I got to the photographs.
I took a deep breath.
---
The plane landed at LAX just after five in the morning.
The car Adrian had promised was waiting at the curb in passenger pickup, exactly where he'd said it would be—a black SUV with tinted windows and a driver in a dark suit who did not introduce himself, did not take my luggage, did not say a single word to me.
He held the back door open. He waited.
I got in.
He shut the door, walked around to the driver's seat, and pulled out into the morning traffic.
I leaned forward and unlatched the glove compartment. There was a manila envelope inside. I pulled it out and felt the weight of it on my lap. I opened the flap.
Inside was a banded brick of one-hundred-dollar bills—twenty thousand dollars, give or take—and beneath it, a single folded sheet of paper that turned out to be a notarized statement of voluntary employment release, drafted in legalese, dated for today, with one blank line for a signature.
Adrian had thought of everything.
He had thought of the buyout. He had thought of the paperwork.
I had not asked him for any of it.
I sat back against the leather and watched the palm trees go past the window and let myself feel, for one brief and dangerous second, the warmth of being prepared for by someone who was not Julian.
Then I closed the envelope. I tucked it under my arm. I leaned forward.
I said. "Eight-fifteen. Pull around to the alley. Park where I can see the back door without them seeing the car."
The driver nodded once into the rearview mirror.
We drove east.