Six Weeks to the Hearing

Six weeks. She could feel it — the countdown, the way the days were stacking up, the way the full hearing was getting real in a way that the temporary order had never been.

She worked. She documented. The anonymous mail kept coming. The PI kept watching. Gavin kept not answering, and she kept not pushing, because there was a limit to how much she could handle at once, and she had decided that the storage unit could wait until after March 4th.

She would get through the hearing. She would win the permanent order. Then she would find out what was in the unit.

That was the plan. That was the only plan she had.

Diane's report in the fifth week showed Drake near the Route 9 facility twice — not entering, just near it, parked outside, for thirty minutes at a time. The sixth week showed him near Liza's apartment. Not close enough to violate the order — 500 feet was far enough that she could pretend not to know. But he was there. She knew he was there.

She went to bed at ten-thirty. She set the alarm for six-fifteen. She made the tea she always made and she sat at the table and she looked at the evidence log and she thought about the full hearing and the permanent order and the day after, when she would finally be allowed to know what her brother had been keeping from her for six years.

She went to sleep. In the morning, she made the saffron thing again. She went to work. She came home.

Six weeks.