Jonah called the police before entering.
Lucy was staying with a friend, and he was grateful for that small accident of timing.
An officer took photographs and asked whether anything was missing.
Jonah discovered that his folder of wage records was gone.
His laptop remained on the desk.
So did a jar containing forty dollars in change.
The officer cautioned him not to assume he knew who had entered.
Jonah agreed.
He contacted Hannah Price and told her exactly what he had found.
Hannah confirmed that copies of the records were stored securely elsewhere.
She advised him to preserve the police report and avoid confronting anyone.
Arthur offered to move Jonah and Lucy into a guesthouse on his property.
Jonah refused at first.
He did not want Lucy to feel that they had to run whenever someone frightened them.
Then Lucy came home and saw her broken model of Saturn.
She knelt beside the scattered rings and began picking up pieces without speaking.
Jonah realized that his pride could not be more important than her safety.
They moved temporarily into a modest furnished apartment arranged through Evelyn’s office.
The lease was documented, and Jonah insisted on repaying the cost once he could.
Arthur agreed to discuss repayment later.
That night, Lucy asked whether they had done something wrong.
Jonah told her they had told the truth.
She said those were not always the same thing in the eyes of frightened people.
Jonah had no answer.
Chapter Thirteen: The Boardroom Vote
The Bell Meridian board met behind closed doors the following Friday.
Charles presented a motion to remove Arthur from executive oversight on the grounds that his judgment had become unreliable.
Evelyn challenged the supporting documents.
Several statements described Arthur’s disappearance as evidence of confusion.
Arthur explained why he had traveled alone and admitted that the decision had been reckless.
He refused to let Charles turn recklessness into incapacity.
The board’s independent counsel requested a review of the property transactions in Millbrook.
The review had uncovered consulting fees paid to a company connected to Charles’s longtime associate.
Those fees had not been properly disclosed during the acquisition process.
Charles said the payments were legitimate.
The counsel replied that legitimacy would be determined through examination, not assertion.
Arthur watched his nephew with an expression Jonah had never seen before.
It was not anger.
It was grief.
After the meeting, Arthur told Evelyn that he had helped raise Charles after the boy’s father died.
