Proof

Naomi didn't sleep that night, and by the time the sun came up she'd made a decision she wasn't sure she had the right to make alone: she called Sable and asked her to come over, just the two of them, no lawyers yet.

Sable arrived looking like she hadn't slept either, and for a long moment they just stood in the kitchen — the kitchen Naomi had painted, the kitchen Sable might soon legally own — not sure how to start.

"I want to understand," Naomi finally said. "Not the parts that make me angry. The parts that explain him."

Sable exhaled and sat down at the table like her legs had given out the decision for her. "My mother wasn't — she wasn't safe, when I was a kid. Not always. There were years it was fine, and years it really wasn't, and I don't remember most of it clean, just pieces. Being scared of the sound of her keys in the door. A caseworker who came twice and then stopped coming, I don't know why."

Naomi thought of the medical folder in the storage box, the caseworker's card paper-clipped to the front, and said nothing, only nodded for her to keep going.

"Your husband — my father—" Sable stumbled slightly on the word, like she wasn't used to saying it out loud. "He found out when I was seven. I don't know how. He never told me, and my mother won't say. But after that he was just... there. Not living with us. Never claiming me publicly. But there. Money when the power got shut off. A quiet call to the school once, I found out later, when a teacher noticed bruises that weren't from playing outside. He never told anyone who he was to the school. Just insisted someone check on me."

Naomi's throat tightened. "Why didn't he just take you? Fight for custody, get you out?"

"He tried once," Sable said. "My mother threatened to tell you, tell everyone, blow up your whole family, if he pushed it in court. He backed off. I used to hate him for that. I don't anymore. I understand it now — he was choosing the quiet way instead of the loud way, hoping the quiet way would still get me out eventually."

She reached into her bag and slid a thin stack of papers across the table — copies of emails between Gregory and a family attorney, going back years, discussing "protective arrangements" for a minor never named directly, careful and clinical and clearly written by a man terrified of the wrong person reading them.

"I kept these in case my mother ever tried what she's trying now," Sable said. "I didn't think I'd need them this fast."

Naomi looked up from the papers just as her phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Castellan: *Lorraine's attorney filed this morning. Contest hearing is set for Friday.*