CHAPTER FIFTEEN AJ: THE LAST CONVERSATION BEFORE THE RULING
Sophie was waiting near my driveway when I returned.
She stood beside her car and kept both hands visible as though she feared surprising me.
I asked whether everything was all right.
She said Caleb had accepted a new campus job and wanted to tell me himself, but he was in class.
I congratulated him through her.
Sophie smiled and said he would be relieved to hear it.
Then her expression changed.
She said Miriam had asked whether I still believed she intended to burn my house.
I looked toward the repaired curb before answering.
I said I believed Miriam had approached my mailbox with a container and participated in a dangerous plan.
I said the investigation would determine the full circumstances of the ignition.
Sophie nodded.
She asked whether I thought her mother could become a different person after the case ended.
I said I did not know what her mother would choose to do.
I told Sophie that a person could take responsibility without expecting the people harmed to resume a relationship.
Sophie said Miriam had been talking about moving closer to her daughter.
I said she should make that decision for her own reasons, not because I demanded it.
Sophie looked at the house and said Owen had convinced her mother that I was the source of Caleb’s problems.
She said Miriam had been ready to believe him because admitting Caleb’s employer was threatening him felt too frightening.
I told her that explanation helped me understand the decision, but it did not make the fire less dangerous.
Sophie said she understood.
Then she asked whether I regretted challenging the center after everything that had happened.
I thought about the patient learning to trust transfer equipment again.
I thought about Pilar’s overnight shifts and Thomas’s shaking hands.
I thought about Caleb studying for exams while somebody threatened his future.
I said I regretted some decisions I had made during the emergency, but I did not regret reporting the staffing shortage.
Sophie looked relieved.
She said she had worried that all the trouble would convince me silence was safer.
I told her silence had already cost too much.
We stood beside the mailbox for another moment.
Then Sophie thanked me for speaking with her and returned to her car.
I watched her drive away before going inside.
The board’s decision would arrive soon, but I no longer believed it could settle every question raised by the fire.
Some answers belonged to the licensing hearing.
Others belonged to the criminal investigation.
Still others belonged to the people who had to live with what they had done.
I put my keys on the counter and returned to the training instructions waiting on my desk.
