Dante reads it first. I keep my eyes on his face because looking at the letter again would put David's voice back in my head. His expression doesn't change. The composure gives the fury nowhere to go.
After he finishes, he sets the letter down.
His finger taps the sentence:I take responsibility for my part in what happened.
He's heard this language before. His father's version of it. The same polished sentences. The same clean hands.
"'Your part in the family, Dante.' 'Your role in the transition.'" His voice stays quiet. His finger remains on David Ashford's sentence. When he looks at me, the refrigerator hum cuts through the silence. "This man writes the way my father speaks."
He passes the letter to Cole.
Cole reads, and I know the exact moment it lands. His jaw goes first. Then his stare fixes on the same sentence Dante touched.
"Your part," Cole says, his voice low enough to scrape. "He's telling you the broken ribs were your part. He's telling you the hospital was something you did together."
His hands flatten on the table, pressing so hard his knuckles pale. Then he picks up the letter again and reads farther.
"Frightened people shape the truth." His voice drops another register. "He's calling Suzanne a liar. Suzanne. The woman who packed a bag in the middle of the night and sat in the passenger seat of my father's car with a split lip. The woman who moved into our house and made it a home and has called me her son for nine years. He's calling her a liar in a typed letter with a serif font."
Cole's hands press harder against the table.
"He broke your ribs and then he wrote I love you," he says. "Same letter. Same page."
The table creaks under his palms.
"We're calling Richard," Dante says.
"I'm calling Richard," I correct. "He's my attorney."
Dante's mouth closes.
Good.
I call. Richard answers on the second ring, and I tell him all of it. The second letter. The campus visit. The front desk interaction. The card. The timing. The fact that David Ashford knows where I work.
Richard's voice changes before I finish. It gets precise. Measured. Every instruction comes with space for me to answer.
"Don't go to your apartment," he says. "Stay at the house. I'm contacting the DA's office. The campus visit constitutes a parole violation if his conditions include geographic restrictions. I'll have a protective order filed by Monday. In the meantime, document everything. Dates, times, locations. The letters are evidence."
"I'm a journalist, Richard. I know how to document."
"I know you do. I also know you're scared, and I want you to hear me say that I'm handling this."
My throat tightens around the word scared.
"I'm not the fourteen-year-old in that courtroom anymore," I say. My fingers tighten around the phone. "I'm angry. The scared is underneath the angry, and the angry is doing more useful work right now."
Silence holds on the line.
Then Richard exhales. "That sounds exactly like something your mother would say."
"Good."
He gives me instructions. Protective order process. Timeline. What constitutes admissible documentation. Who to contact if David appears again. What to save. What not to touch. By thetime we hang up, the plan exists outside my skull, written in dates, evidence, phone calls, and signatures.
"Monday," I say to Dante and Cole. "Protective order filed Monday. Richard's on it."
Dante nods, but his face hasn't changed. I know the phone call he wants to make. Marco's people are already monitoring David Ashford, watched him walk into my building and walk out again without lifting a finger. Richard has dates and motions. Marco has timestamps and men in cars.
