"Dragging you into it."
"Daniel, Dad was my father too."
I closed my eyes. She was right, of course. I'd become so accustomed to thinking of the workshop as my responsibility that I sometimes forgot it was our shared history, even if the paperwork divided the property differently. Nora had no need to be invited into protecting that history. She'd already been standing watch over it while I was hundreds of miles away.
I reached the workshop just before noon. Malik stood outside beside Nora, his sleeves rolled up and a dark smear of grease across his left forearm. He was thirty-four, a furniture conservator who'd worked with me for nearly a decade. He had apprenticed under Dad during his last years, which meant he still sometimes called me by my childhood nickname when he forgot himself.
He didn't use it that day. He hugged me hard enough to bruise my ribs and said, "They're inside. The pieces are safe for now."
Nora hugged me next. She looked pale beneath her exhaustion, and I saw how much of the night she'd spent being brave because she didn't have another choice. She pointed toward the loading alley. The freight truck was still there, attended by a supervisor who looked as though he wished he'd chosen a different line of work.
Inside, the workshop smelled of dust and old wood. Sunlight fell through the tall windows and across the open space where the Riverlight collection usually stood. Four of the pieces had already been returned to their original positions, but the rest were resting on padded supports. Packing straps lay coiled on the floor. A steel trolley stood beside the arched table, one wheel stained with the reddish dust from our workshop bricks.
I walked straight to the nearest cabinet. My father had carved a small crescent on the inside of its lower rail, a private mark he'd explained to me when I was eleven. I found it with my fingers and felt something in my chest loosen. The work was still there. Whatever came next, I hadn't lost it yet.
"Daniel?" a voice said behind me.
I turned. Adrian Cole stood near the office doorway in an expensive coat that looked entirely wrong in the workshop's dusty light. His expression was sober, and he held a folder in both hands. Seeing him in person made the situation feel both more real and more humiliating. This was the man Tessa had told me she wanted, standing among my father's furniture like an unfortunate guest at a family funeral.
"You stayed," I said.
"I told you I would."
"That doesn't make you trustworthy."