"Whoever did this wants us angry," Miller continued. "We're angry. That doesn't mean we have to give them what they came for." Deak Morgan, one of the older members, nodded slowly from the end of the table. He said anger was a fine reason to keep somebody safe and a terrible reason to decide what happened next.
At Rose's apartment, sleep came no more easily. Nora had eaten half a piece of toast and insisted on sleeping with the hallway light on, a request she had not made since she was five. Rose sat beside the bed until her daughter closed her eyes, then remained there listening to the apartment pipes and the distant traffic. Every small noise seemed newly separate from the background it usually blended into.
Rose was angry with herself for needing childcare, though she knew that feeling was unreasonable. She had spent years doing everything people advised working parents to do: keeping a job, paying rent on time when possible, checking school notices, arranging dependable adults. She had not sent Nora into danger through carelessness. Somebody had chosen to bring danger near her child, and the distinction mattered even when exhaustion made it hard to remember.
Nora woke an hour later and found her mother sitting in the same place. "Are the men mad at me?" she asked. Rose touched her forehead and said no. Nora frowned as though testing the answer against what she had seen. "Mister Jojo looked mad," she said. "He was," Rose admitted, "but not at you."
"I thought if I made them stop, nobody would get hurt," Nora whispered. Rose held her closer. She told her daughter that noticing something was useful, but stopping dangerous people was a job for adults, police officers, and people who had the right training. Nora listened carefully, then asked whether the strange man had gone home. Rose said he was with the police and that she did not know what would happen next.
It was the answer Nora needed. She was old enough to detect the shape of a false promise and young enough to deserve a truthful one that did not burden her with adult fear. Rose sat with her until she slept again. In the kitchen afterward, she opened a notebook and wrote down Nora's exact words about the school and the door, afraid that tomorrow's anxiety might alter the memory of them.
At County General, Rose had watched frightened families search the faces of medical workers for certainty that could not always be given. She had learned that clear information, honestly delivered, could be kinder than reassurance that disappeared under scrutiny. Now she found herself on the other side of that conversation. She wanted somebody to tell her the danger was finished, and nobody who knew the facts was willing to say it.