Margaret nodded slowly. She understood. She had watched Michael talk his way out of things for thirty years.
So I'm proposing something, Ruiz went on. "A controlled meeting. Here, at the clubhouse, in a room you know, with people you trust around you. We invite Michael — through his lawyer, properly, above board — to come and speak with you. We tell him it's a chance to settle this as a family, to hear his mother's wishes directly. And I will be here, openly, in the room, not hidden, not recording anything in secret. Washington is a two-party-consent state, Mrs. Bell, and I will not break the law to make this case. What Michael says in front of witnesses — in front of me, a detective, and in front of Logan, Duke, and Rosa — that is evidence, clean and usable, and no lawyer can throw it out."
Ruiz went on, her voice even. "His lawyer will probably tell him to come. A son who refuses to speak to his own mother, after a judge has already denied his guardianship petition, looks like a son with something to hide. And Michael cares about how he looks — that's always been his weakness, Mrs. Bell, and this time it may be ours to use. He'll come expecting to persuade you, the way he's persuaded you before. He won't expect you to be sitting in a room full of people who believe you, with a detective taking notes in plain sight." Margaret thought about that — about Michael walking in, confident, and finding not a frightened old woman alone in her kitchen, but a woman with friends at her back — and something in her chest loosened, just a little.
The room was very quiet. The wall clock ticked. Somewhere in the garage, a wrench clinked against metal.
Margaret's first feeling was terror, pure and simple, the old terror that had lived in her body for years and that she had thought, until recently, was simply part of being old. She pictured Michael walking through the clubhouse door, pictured his face when he saw her sitting there, pictured his voice dropping into the low, urgent register he used when he wanted her to doubt herself. Her hands began to tremble, and she clasped them in her lap, and she thought, I cannot do this. I cannot sit across from him and listen to him lie to my face again.
And then, underneath the terror, she felt something else: a determination that had been growing in her since the morning she walked into this clubhouse and asked for work. She thought of Henry, falling. She thought of the note on the mantelpiece. She thought of the grocery store, and of the judge saying, "Petition denied," and of her own voice in that courtroom, steady and clear. She thought of the thirty years she had spent being afraid, and of how tired she was of it — not tired in the way old people get tired, but tired the way a person gets tired of carrying someone else's lie.
If I do this, she said slowly, "can I stop? If it becomes too much, can I say stop, and it stops?"
Immediately, Ruiz said. "One word from you, and Logan ends it, and Michael leaves. You are in control of this room, Mrs. Bell. That is the entire point."
Margaret looked at Logan. He was watching her, his unreadable face as steady as it had been the day she arrived, and he said, "We will be right there. Every second. He will not touch you. He will not raise his voice to you without me ending it. And if you change your mind at any point — even tomorrow morning, even five minutes before — we cancel, and no one thinks less of you."
Duke, who had been standing by the workbench with his arms crossed, came and crouched beside her chair, the way Logan had crouched on her first day, so that he would not have to look down at her. "You don't owe him this meeting, Margaret," he said gently. "You've already done more than anyone could ask. This is only if you want it."
Margaret was quiet for a long time. She thought about fear, and about what fear had cost her, and about what it might cost other people — other mothers, other wives — if Michael walked free because no one had been willing to sit across from him and make him say it. And then she lifted her chin, the way she had lifted it on the day she walked into the clubhouse, and said, "I'll do it. I'm terrified, and I'll do it. Henry deserves that much. And so do I."
Sarah Kim came the next day to brief her, and her briefing was practical and kind, the way all of Sarah's help was practical and kind. She told Margaret what to say and what not to say: to speak only the truth, to not argue, to not accuse in anger, to let Michael talk, to say, when the moment was right, the one sentence they had agreed on — "I remember, Michael." She told her where everyone would sit, and where Ruiz would sit, openly, with her notebook, and that the door would stay unlocked, and that Rosa would be beside her, and that she could ask for water, or for a pause, or for it to end, at any time.