The isolation wasn't careless. It was engineered. And the phone and wallet weren't the only things they'd stripped away. There was still one thread I had counted on, and they had cut that, too. My daughter Naen lived in Eugene.
For years, we had spoken without fail every Sunday. An unbroken ritual, the one constant that had survived everything. Sunday came. Then it went. Declan told me she was buried in a work project.
She's in the middle of something big, Dad. He said, eyes on his tablet. She'll reach out when she's through it. But I knew Naen. She would not go quiet on me.
Not this close to losing her mother. That was simply not who she was. One afternoon, while Ingrid was out, I slipped into the kitchen and lifted the landline. Naen's number had been in my memory for years. It rang once, twice, then a click, but not her voice.
A recording. This number has been blocked or is no longer in service. I set the receiver down and tried again. Same result. Declan had locked my own daughter's number out of the house phone.
That evening, I went to find him. I kept my voice measured though my hands weren't cooperating. Declan, I said, "I can't reach your sister. Something's wrong." He set his fork down and turned to face me with that expression.
The one he had learned to construct, the one built to pass for compassion. "Dad, we wanted to spare you this. Naen called me two days ago. She said she needs some distance for now. Hearing your voice brings everything about her mother flooding back and she's not able to carry that right now."
Every word of that message was a lie. She'd asked us to wait on calls until she felt ready. That's what he claimed. My gut had already called it before he'd reached the end of that sentence. Naen wasn't the kind of woman who crumbled at the burial.
She'd been the one with her fingers locked around mine, the one keeping us both from going under. No version of my daughter generates a message like that. And I had nothing, no evidence, no leverage, not a single thing solid enough to lay in front of him. That night, once the penthouse went quiet, I eased out into the corridor and ended up outside Declan's office. The door wasn't fully shut, just open enough for sound to escape.
He was somewhere in the middle of a phone call, and the detail that cut deepest wasn't what came out of his mouth. It was what accompanied it. He was laughing. She hadn't objected to a word of it. I told her dad is slipping.
I told her he has early onset dementia and gets aggressive on the phone. I told her the doctors recommended no contact for a while to keep him calm. Yeah, she was crying, but she agreed. It is for the best. I pressed my back flat against the wall and made myself breathe.