Nadia watched him go through the front window, arms crossed, jaw set in a way I recognized from her own mother at that same age.
A moment later, she mumbled something about needing to run out to the car for her phone charger and disappeared out the same door.
Nearly forty minutes passed before she returned.
Then our front door burst open.
Nadia stood there, out of breath, tears streaking down her face.
Clutched tightly against her chest was Harlan’s leather briefcase.
“Nadia,” I said, standing up so fast my chair scraped hard against the floor. “Where did you get that?”
She shook her head, still catching her breath. “Don’t ask how I got it right now. You need to see what’s inside it. And why he never stays past 7:30.”
She set the briefcase down on the dinner table, right beside the untouched chocolate pie, and unclasped the latches with hands that hadn’t fully stopped shaking.
My mother looked inside first.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
I looked over her shoulder, and my own stomach dropped straight through the floor.
A thick stack of cash, banded together in uneven bundles. A folder of medical paperwork, the kind with a facility’s letterhead across the top. And, tucked into the side pocket, a small framed photograph of a young man I didn’t recognize at all, maybe mid-twenties, smiling in what looked like an old graduation photo.
“Who is this?” my mother asked, her voice barely holding together. “Yvonne, who is this boy?”
I had no better answer than she did.
Nadia wiped her face with the back of her hand, took a slow breath, and said the thing that ended up meaning considerably more than any of us expected in that moment.
“Grandma, that’s not even the worst part. I saw who he takes this to.”
