Then Sophie stopped at the door.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Was the woman you helped today worth all this?”
The question struck me harder than she intended.
Everyone looked at me.
I crouched in front of her.
“Yes.”
Sophie frowned.
“Even now?”
“Especially now.”
“Why?”
“Because if you ever fall on the side of a road, I want whoever sees you to stop.”
Her eyes filled again.
I touched her cheek.
“We don’t decide whether kindness matters based on whether it rewards us.”
Then I looked toward Lucy.
“We do it because somebody has to.”
After they left, Eleanor stood silently near the kitchen.
“You have good girls.”
“They have a good mother.”
“And father.”
I didn’t answer.
By midnight, investigators had traced Marcus’s burner phone.
He hadn’t gone to the airport.
He had driven north.
Toward an abandoned Vale construction property.
Claire recognized it immediately.
An unfinished resort complex purchased during the financial crisis.
