Page 25 of Soft Erasure

AMBER: Wednesday. Not before.

I sent it.

The band was warm before he replied. It had logged his entry into the building before I knew he was inside it. That was the part I hadn’t yet named: not that he was watching me, but that the watch was in my skin, and the skin was glad. The warmth came before I decided to feel it, and hating the gladness changed nothing.

Adherence: 86 → 84.

Caleb came around the corner. The same blazer from the screen. A man in two places now, the kitchen and the lobby, and the family had bought both rooms.

Matthew had promised Caleb would look in on me in the first weeks. Four days had gone with the hallway empty. Here he was, keeping the promise in its ugliest shape: come not to sit with me but to watch me sign.

He gave Willson the smile men give women who ask questions men have no time for.

“Detective. Always a pleasure. Did Simon walk you through the permits.”

“Mr. Ashford. We’re getting there.”

He looked at me. “Sign, Amber.”

I looked at him.

“Family equals safety,” he said. He said it the way you would say I love you to a person you had practiced loving. He said it twice, the second time silent, in his face. “Family equals safety. Just sign, Amb.”

The pen on the desk was not the Bic. It was a Mont Blanc, for residents. Two pens, because there were two hands at Crownhill.

I picked up the Mont Blanc and set the tip on the laminate. I started the A. I didn’t finish it. One stroke, and I stopped.

The room held.

I put the pen down.

“I’ll think about it.”

Caleb’s face did the thing I had seen in the rearview. His jaw set. He was going to say something practiced and soft, and the soft thing was going to land like a cold hand on my back.

“Family was consent you sign once,” he said. “We did that years ago, Amb. The laminate is paperwork.”

I didn’t look at him. I looked at Willson.

Caleb had a hand in his jacket pocket. It came out with nothing in it. The next sentence stayed in the pocket. He looked instead at Penelope’s desk.

“Detective. If you have a follow-up, put it on paper. With a date, and your direct line. I’ll answer it the way I’d answer any question a stranger asked about a man I share a building with.”

She held my eye a half-second longer than a stranger would. Then she smiled, differently, filing it away.

“Yes, Ms. Vale. I’ll send a request through the building counsel. Mr. Voss will receive it. He’ll forward as appropriate.”

She handed me a card with two fingers, the second finger moving against my palm, once, twice. She had counted there. I closed my hand on it. It was thin. Thinner than a business card. I knew, before I looked, there was a second card behind it.

She turned. Pembroke turned. The officers turned. The lobby breathed back into the marble.

Simon clicked the Bic. “Ms. Vale. The permit.”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“It will need to be filed by end of day. Penelope is firm on this.”

“Then Penelope can knock at six.”