Chapter 6 - What Callum Thought I Owed Him
For a moment, I heard nothing but my own breathing.
Callum had done that to me before.
Said something monstrous in an ordinary tone, then waited while I struggled to find a response.
This time, I found one.
“You told a dangerous man I had something you knew I didn’t have.”
“I needed time.”
“So you gave him me.”
“That’s not fair.”
The phrase almost made me laugh.
Even now.
Even here.
Fairness, according to Callum, remained whatever arrangement required the least responsibility from him.
“Where are the notebooks?”
“I can get them back.”
“Did you steal them to sell them?”
Silence.
“Callum.”
“I borrowed money. Wescott said the records could resolve a provenance issue. I thought your dad’s notes would prove where certain pieces came from.”
“You stole from my storage unit.”
“I was going to replace everything.”
“My father’s handwriting isn’t a lamp.”
He breathed hard into the phone.
“You don’t understand what these people are like.”
“I’m beginning to.”
He tried a different voice then.
The soft one.
The voice that had once made me doubt my own memory.
“Come meet me. Just us. We can fix this before Ferraro turns it into something worse.”
“No.”
“Clara.”
“No.”
A small, perfect word.
I had needed fourteen months to make it sound that clear.
After the call, I wrote down everything I remembered and sent it to Naomi.
I did not agree to a meeting.
I did not tell Luca to find him.
By morning, investigators had confirmed Callum was alive and in contact with his own attorney.
The threatening photograph had been real.
So had his willingness to redirect the threat toward me.
Both facts could exist together.
I struggled with that more than I expected.
It would have been easier if everyone could be sorted into frightened people and frightening people.
Callum belonged in both groups.
That did not mean he got another key.
Over the next week, pieces began falling into place.
Wescott had been arranging the sale of several objects from the old warehouse shipments. The breviary’s unusual binding had caught his attention because someone had mentioned records hidden in restored books.
He did not know exactly what my father had preserved.
Neither did Enzo.
Callum had offered the notebooks as a way to buy himself out of debt.
Then he had panicked when he saw me with Luca.
He assumed I had learned everything.
My frightened kiss in an elevator had become, in his mind, a strategic alliance.
I might have enjoyed that misunderstanding if it had not put people in danger.
Ruth and I returned to the shop one afternoon to review old acquisition files under the conditions investigators had given us.
The familiar smell nearly undid me.
Leather.
Dust.
Tea Ruth always forgot until it cooled.
“I won’t ask you to forgive me quickly,” she said.
“Good.”
“But I want you to know I’m finished deciding what you should be spared.”
I looked at her.
“Then tell me something difficult.”
She nodded.
“Your father asked whether I could keep you and your mother away from the workshop for a few days. I thought he was being overcautious. I said I was busy.”
I sat down.
Ruth’s face crumpled.
“I’ve replayed that conversation for fourteen years.”
I wanted to comfort her.
I also wanted to be angry.
For once, I allowed both without choosing immediately.
“Did you tell the investigators?”
“Yes. Then and now.”
“Okay.”
That was all I could give her.
She accepted it.
Late that evening, Luca sent a message through Naomi.
His uncle had been arrested on charges connected to threats and the current transactions. Additional investigations were continuing.
Luca had provided records.
He had also disclosed conduct that exposed him to prosecution.
At the bottom was a short personal message.
You asked me not to do this for a reward. I heard you.
I read it twice.
May you like
Then I set down my phone and cried for reasons that had nothing to do with wanting him rescued from consequences.
I cried because, for once, a man had listened without trying to make listening into a favor.
