Chapter 8 - THE FIRST NIGHT WITHOUT A WATCH
One year after I entered the clubhouse with five hundred dollars, Emma moved into a small apartment near campus.
The building had controlled entry, bright parking-lot lights, and cameras managed by a company neither David nor I could access.
Emma chose her own locks.
She chose which friends received a spare key.
She chose whether to use an escort after late shifts.
On the first evening, Thomas and Amos carried a secondhand couch up three flights of stairs.
Tasha helped secure the wireless network.
Then the riders left before sunset.
No motorcycles remained outside.
No one watched from a truck.
Emma had requested one night without protection so she could learn the difference between being alone and being abandoned.
I helped unpack dishes.
A framed photograph of us sat on the counter beside an unopened cardboard box.
“You can stay,” she said.
“You don’t need me to.”
“I know.”
That answer mattered.
We ate grocery-store pizza on the floor because the small dining table had not arrived.
At nine, I stood to leave.
Emma walked me to the door.
The hallway was quiet.
“Call when you get home,” she said.
“You sound like me.”
“Terrifying.”
I laughed.
She locked the door after I stepped outside.
I heard the dead bolt turn once.
Not three times.
At home, the old hallway camera had been removed. The screw holes remained in the wall because neither of us felt any urgency to hide them.
They were evidence that something had happened there.
They were also proof that it no longer controlled the house.
The five hundred dollars remained inside the original white envelope.
Thomas had refused it every time I tried to donate it to the new escort program.
“Spend it on something that belongs to your daughter’s future,” he said.
Emma used part of it to buy a drawing tablet for her design classes.
The rest paid for the apartment deposit.
Two weeks after moving, she came home to find David’s letter among the boxes I had delivered from our house.
She called me.
“I forgot this was in the kitchen drawer.”
“You don’t have to open it.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No.”
I waited.
She did not sound frightened.
Only uncertain.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“What if he says he’s sorry?”
“Then you decide whether the apology asks anything from you.”
“What if I still love him?”
“Love is not permission.”
She became quiet.
Through the phone, I heard paper moving.
I could not tell whether she had opened the envelope or placed it somewhere else.
I did not ask.
The next morning, Emma walked alone from her apartment to class.
David’s letter remained on her kitchen table.
The envelope was no longer sealed.
May you like
But when I saw her that weekend, she did not tell me what he had written or whether she planned to answer.
For the first time since Richard began following her, the unanswered question belonged entirely to Emma.
