“There will be officers at the warehouse. We have advised the venue not to hold the preview. The owner says Rusk is still refusing to cancel.”
Mara took a breath. “Then whatever he intended, it isn’t finished.”
Before the warehouse preview, Mara sat at Priya’s dining table and reconstructed the afternoon in four columns: what she had actually seen, what other people had told her, what the cameras recorded, and what she had merely assumed. Priya produced the paper from her printing shop, thick cream sheets that made the messy notes look absurdly formal.
In the first column Mara wrote that she had heard the glass break and had seen Willa leaving. In the second she wrote Willa’s account of the threat and Owen’s description of the photographs. In the third she recorded the approach to the back window, the man with the case reflected in the glass, and the later attempted entry. In the fourth she wrote the things that frightened her most: that somebody had watched her routines, that her ordinary house had been selected as an unwilling stage, and that she might never again believe a knock at the door.
“That last column doesn’t make you irrational,” Priya said.
“But it isn’t the same as evidence.”
“No. It’s what the evidence has done to you.”
Mara studied the page. The distinction mattered. She could see why Willa had acted as she did without approving it. She could also recognize the damage to her sense of safety without letting that damage turn every stranger into an enemy. The more Simon had blurred reality and fiction, the more necessary it became to name what she knew.
Alma called with news that several children’s photographs had been found in Arcadia’s public promotional materials. Parents were being notified individually. One image showed a child’s hands holding a cardboard house. Another contained a notebook page with a surname visible. The librarian had already contacted the company demanding removal, and Celia had responded almost immediately that she would take the images down. Simon hadn’t replied.
“We shouldn’t circulate the screenshots in the neighborhood chat,” Mara said.
“I haven’t,” Alma answered. “People are already asking for them.”
“Tell them there are children in those pictures who don’t need more strangers studying their faces.”
The thought reminded her of the familiar ritual that followed every local scandal. People shared photographs to prove they cared, then forgot that the people inside those photographs had to keep living ordinary lives afterward. Mara asked Alma to arrange a conversation with the families about the future of the workshop. Some might never want to participate again. Others might insist on continuing under clearer rules. Both responses deserved respect.
At half past six, the doorbell rang downstairs. Priya checked her own entry camera and found Tomas standing beside a large cardboard box. He had come to deliver a replacement latch for Mara’s service door, which he had ordered through a colleague. He offered to install it once the police finished their examination. Mara thanked him, then asked whether the original door looked unusually easy to open.
