Page 134 of Split Decision

"I didn't correct it the way I should have," Travis says. His voice has changed. Lower. "When it hit us. I've been going over it since—whether I could have done something different, whether I was too slow. But the angle was wrong. It came specifically at the back wheel. Not the side, not a glancing blow from someone drifting lanes. The back wheel."

He stops.

"That's not a drunk driver drifting," he says.

"No," Luke says. "It's not."

Another silence.

"Is Andi okay?" Travis asks. Not asking about the physical recovery—he knows that. Asking something else.

I lean toward the phone. "I'm okay," I say. "Travis—thank you. For that night. For staying."

"Of course," he says. The two words carry everything they need to.

After Luke hangs up, we drive in silence for a moment.

"The angle of the impact," I say.

"Yes."

"That's specific. That's something Bill can work with."

"Yes." Luke's hands are steady on the wheel. "She targeted the back wheel because it would cause loss of control without leaving obvious evidence of intent. If you hit the back wheel of a motorcycle at speed on a dark highway, it looks exactly like what it looked like."

I look at the road ahead.

"She's been doing this for thirty years," I say.

"She got careless," Luke says. "Or she got confident. Either way, she left witnesses."

We pull onto our street. The house is where we left it, ordinary in the evening light. The living room window is visible from the driveway, and the bookcase is just inside it.

"Tomorrow," I say.

"Daniel," he says.

"Daniel," I agree.

We go inside.

We don't speak in the living room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

ANDI

Three days after the kidnapping attempt, I go back to the center.

Not because it's safe—it isn't, not entirely, not yet. Because staying away is a version of being silenced, and I've done enough of that for one lifetime. Luke drives me. He parks across the street and doesn't pretend he's doing anything other than what he's doing, and I don't ask him to. We've stopped performing normalcy for each other. That's one of the things this year gave us.

Mrs. Alvarez is at her desk when I walk in. She looks at my leg brace, my crutch, and the set of my jaw, then stands upand holds the door to the main corridor open without saying anything. Which is exactly right.

I spend the morning in meetings. The board has questions about the audit's final phase. Two program staff need my decisions about the fall schedule. Marcus has emailed from Georgia State—his first week, a professor who already knows his name, and a study group he joined on the second day. I read it twice.

By early afternoon, the building has settled into its after-school rhythm. Programs are underway in the main room. Mrs. Alvarez is negotiating with a supply vendor on the phone. The particular hum of a place that is still here, still running, still doing what it was built to do despite everything that has been aimed at it.

I'm at my desk with the laptop open and the fall grant applications arranged by deadline when I hear the front door.