The Women on the List
Chapter 09 - The Women on the List
Ruth read the proposed custody petition twice before she spoke.
It alleged that Vincent's activities made the Caruso home unsafe and that Clara's mother was deceased. It proposed Helena as temporary guardian pending further review. Much of the allegation about Vincent's business had enough truth behind it to be dangerous; the statement about Elena was false. Ruth found no evidence that the petition had been filed, but a draft bore Marco's office heading and a date three days away.
“He isn't trying to win custody for Helena,” Ruth said. “He's trying to create leverage. He knows Vincent will pay almost anything to keep Clara out of court.”
“Then why write it down?” Vincent asked.
“Because respectable-looking papers frighten people who have never read them. And because he may believe parts of this are winnable.”
Ruth arranged for family-law counsel to review Clara's situation separately. She asked Vincent to make an independent account of his finances and security staff, with no help from Marco's associates. She recommended Elena obtain certified records to correct the erroneous death registration. The work was slow. They did it anyway.
Meanwhile Rose invited three former Aurora House tenants into her apartment. Two came with walking sticks; the third carried a shopping trolley she refused to leave by the door. They drank weak tea and compared the letters that had arrived in the months before they lost their apartments.
One woman, Mrs. Rinaldo, had been told the trust was bankrupt. Another had received a notice saying she was no longer eligible because her husband had retired before a particular date. The third, a former hospital cleaner named Teresa, brought a yellowed rental booklet with Lucia Caruso's signature on the front page.
“Your mother used to come every Christmas,” Teresa told Vincent. “She'd ask if the radiators worked. She knew who liked marmalade. Then she died, and men came with clipboards. None of them knew our names.”
Vincent examined the booklet. It contained handwritten notes recording maintenance requests and annual renewals. The last entry was from the year before Lucia's death. After that, residents had received documents transferring their homes to a new entity called Northbridge Living.
“Marco said it was administrative,” he told them.
“It wasn't administrative when they changed the locks,” Mrs. Rinaldo said.
The women were not interested in his regret. They wanted the addresses of the companies now holding their old apartments and copies of the leases that had been used to remove them. Ruth arranged for an independent auditor. Elena built a table of transactions from the tin's carbon copies and the tenants' records. Mae found an address book Lucia kept in the old sewing room, with telephone numbers beside names long since forgotten by the Caruso office.
Rose did the calling. She had once worked as a nurse and could speak firmly without raising her voice. By Friday afternoon eleven former tenants had agreed to provide records. Another woman said she would speak only if someone came to her, because her husband had dementia and she could not leave him alone.
“I'll go,” Rose said. “You don't need a man with a car and a title for every errand.”
On Saturday Elena visited Clara again. They went to a park with Rose and Rosa. Clara held Elena's hand for part of the walk, then let go to run after a leaf. They stopped at a pond where ducks gathered under the bridge. Clara wanted to feed them bread; Rose explained the park rules and produced a little bag of oats instead.
Elena watched her mother kneel beside the child and felt the unfairness of the lost years in a physical way, like a tight shoe. Rose had missed birthdays she could never get back. It was tempting to imagine a single person responsible for all of it. The truth, Elena was learning, had many hands. Some had held her down. Others had simply failed to reach for her. Later she asked why her mother hadn't come to school for the autumn play. Elena told her she had been ill and kept away, and that the grown-ups were working to make sure it didn't happen again.
“Will you come to the next one?” Clara asked.
“If you'll save me a seat.”
“I can save two,” Clara said. “Daddy can sit there too.”
Elena glanced at Vincent, standing a little way off by the park gate. He had come at Clara's request and had not tried to shorten the distance between himself and his wife. There was tenderness in the restraint, though she was not ready to say so.
That evening Ruth called them into the library. The independent auditor had matched the clinic payments to Northbridge Living. Funds intended to maintain Aurora House housing had paid for Elena's confinement, Ferris's surveillance, and consulting fees to a company controlled by Marco's brother-in-law. The bank records were incomplete, but the pattern was difficult to explain innocently.
“What do we do with it?” Vincent asked.
“Give it to the people who can subpoena the rest,” Ruth said. “The attorney general's office and the prosecutor. Not to men who will make threats on your behalf.”
Helena agreed to a sworn interview. She had already retained her own lawyer, and Elena was relieved by that. Confession should not be a performance staged for forgiveness; it should survive questions from somebody who did not love her.
At dusk Rose returned from the bank carrying a cardboard document box. The previous day she'd found an old safe-deposit statement among Daniel's papers and remembered the key he used to keep on his ring. She'd spent the morning establishing her right, as executor of his estate, to examine the box. Inside was the original deed to Aurora House, wrapped in tissue, with a note in Lucia's handwriting: Give this to the one who remembers why we began. Daniel had kept it safe for the day someone dared ask for it. Rose had been unable to speak when she saw her husband's name on the bank's old signature card.
Ruth read the deed aloud. The independent trustee's appointment could not be changed without signed consent from a majority of the surviving residents, and Lucia's death had not extinguished their rights. If valid, the clause could undermine years of unauthorized property transfers.
Then the lights went out.
May you like
The outage lasted eleven seconds. When power returned, the box remained on the table, but one of the older women was gone. Her shopping trolley stood beside the door. In its basket someone had placed a folded note addressed to Vincent.
It said: Bring the deed to the old warehouse before midnight, or Teresa will never tell you what happened to Daniel Vale.
