Chapter 6 - WHAT NOAH SAW
The next morning, Ryan drove Noah to school.
Victoria usually handled it.
Noah sat silently in the passenger seat.
Ryan attempted to speak.
“Your mother is having a difficult time.”
Noah looked through the window.
“She made it happen.”
“You are nine.”
“I know what I saw.”
“Adults can misunderstand things too.”
“Did you misunderstand when you came inside?”
Ryan tightened his hands on the wheel.
He had not witnessed the beginning.
Only the scene Victoria created.
“No.”
Noah finally looked at him.
“Then I saw more than you.”
The sentence stayed with Ryan all morning.
At school, Noah told counselor Evelyn Price that he did not want to go home.
She asked whether anyone had hurt him.
“No.”
“Are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Of whom?”
Noah hesitated.
“My mom.”
The school contacted Ryan.
Victoria arrived first.
She told the counselor Noah was experiencing anxiety because of Daniel’s cognitive decline.
“He thinks he has to protect his grandfather.”
Evelyn asked to speak with Noah alone.
Victoria agreed.
But as she left, she touched two fingers against her burgundy sleeve.
Noah recognized the signal.
She used it whenever warning him not to speak.
The counselor asked what happened.
Noah changed his answer.
“I’m not scared.”
“Did someone ask you to say that?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go home?”
He looked toward the office door.
“Yes.”
Evelyn did not believe him.
She documented the contradiction.
At the mansion, Victoria took Noah’s school recorder.
“Did you record us?”
“No.”
She opened the device.
The newest file contained only silence.
Noah had removed the memory card at school.
He hid it inside his blue sweater.
Victoria looked at him.
“Your father thinks you are confused.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“He thinks you are too young to understand.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
She knelt.
“If you continue lying, your grandfather will be arrested.”
Noah’s face paled.
“And Dad?”
“He will learn you destroyed this family.”
Victoria stood.
“Tomorrow, you will tell the police you only saw the end.”
Noah held the hidden memory card against his chest.
On it was Victoria’s satisfied laugh after Ryan promised to remove Daniel.
And a phone conversation she believed no one else heard.
The man on the call asked:
“Did Ryan sign the trust transfer?”
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Victoria answered:
“Not yet. But after tonight, his father won’t be here to stop him.”
