Ellis found Leonie beside the lounge counter. He said Ada wanted her in the corridor office, and he did not wait for her to ask why. Nia looked up from her own table when Leonie crossed the room. Leonie had barely a second to signal that she would return. Nia gave no sign she wanted the signal.
Ada stood in the office with a folded note in her hand. The door stayed open until Leonie had entered. Then Ada closed it, and the low sound of the ferry filled the pause.
“Cal showed me our answer,” Ada said.
Leonie reached for the back of a chair but did not sit. “His copy?”
“The one we gave him. He asked whether I trusted your account. He suggested I didn't know what I signed.”
“He could read both names.”
“I told him I knew.”
“I told him I regretted signing it,” Leonie said. “He was in the lounge while Nia spoke with you. He wanted me to bring her to his sister's place.”
“He told me the same.” Ada pulled out the chair. This time Leonie sat. “What I didn't tell him was where Miriam got off in 2018. He asked me. I said the answer was false, and that a full account would follow.”
“He might already have guessed Moss Point.”
“He might. Guessing is not the same as our account.”
Leonie remembered Miriam at the Moss Point ramp, holding one case and looking back toward the vehicle deck. Inez's car had been waiting.
“She asked for help leaving him,” Leonie said. “I arranged the ride. You gave permission for her to get off at a port where we were stopping anyway.”
“I know the sequence.”
“You make it sound as if you watched.”
Ada's jaw tightened. “I signed. Don't do that.”
“I kept hearing from Inez because Miriam still needed—”
“I know why. You stopped telling me.”
“I tried. You thought I wanted another company answer.”
“I wouldn't sign another.”
“I didn't ask.”
Ada filled the glass beside the sink and set it near Leonie. Leonie did not take it.
“I called you three weeks after I resigned,” Leonie said. “I remember standing outside the training room with the chairs stacked inside. You didn't answer.”
“I was on the evening crossing.”
“You could have called back.”
“You didn't leave a message.”
“I was afraid you'd hear Miriam's name in my voice before I knew whether I could say it.”
Ada looked at the water. “I saw one missed call. I thought you wanted me to ask why you had left. I didn't think you would answer if I did.”
“You decided that for me.”
“Yes.”
Leonie looked at the glass. “I could have left the message.”
“You could have. I could have called.” Ada moved the glass another inch toward her. “That's not the same as what we signed.”
“No.” Leonie touched the wet ring below the glass.
Ada's face held the same closed attention Leonie remembered from their last week together. They had been unloading at Bellhaven when Leonie mentioned that Miriam had found a room and was looking for work. Ada had asked who told her. Leonie said Inez. A truck had backed along the dock, beeping between their sentences, so they had stepped into a storage passage to finish. Ada had wanted to know whether Leonie had promised Miriam anything more in the company's name. Leonie had heard an accusation and answered the one she expected: Miriam was alone; someone should know she was safe. By the time the truck cleared the ramp, each knew the other's answer and neither knew what the other feared.
Now Ada asked, “Did Miriam know you were reporting her life to me?”
Leonie kept her hand off the glass. “You think I was reporting to you?”
“You told me she had a room and work,” Ada said. “Then I asked one question and you made me feel as if I wanted her back with Cal.”
“I never thought that.”
“Not even once?”
Leonie looked away. “I thought you wanted it over. I was afraid you could only bear to care if there was an end.”
Ada drew back slightly. Leonie had given her a harder answer than either had expected, and it did not make the present fact about Nia easier to disclose.
“Did you know where Miriam was living?” Ada asked.
Leonie shook her head. “Only what Inez chose to pass on. I had no address to give you. I didn't ask for one.”
Ada looked toward the door. “That matters. It still left me with a false company answer Cal could bring back, while you could hear news I couldn't verify.”
“You wanted me to tell you every time Inez called?” Leonie asked.
“I wanted to know when the thing we did was still affecting someone.”
“I thought you wanted it over.”
“I did. Wanting an end and having one are different.” Ada looked at the note on the table, not at Leonie. “When you resigned, I heard from you about shifts and your last pay. I heard nothing more about Miriam. I had signed that answer beside you, and then you went on knowing whether she was safe.”
“I didn't know how to tell you without asking you to approve it,” she said.
“You didn't need my approval to care about her.” Ada's voice roughened, briefly. “You needed to tell me you were doing it.”
Leonie reached toward the water glass between them and stopped. They had once finished a difficult watch at Ada's kitchen table, passing the same glass back and forth because neither had bothered to set out two. Leonie had called Ada first when a course offer came, when her mother was ill, when she needed someone to tell her she was wrong about a crew member. After resigning she had treated every private call as though it would reopen the company lie. She had made that decision for Ada too.
“I thought you'd ask me to choose between keeping Inez's number and keeping you,” she said.
Ada's eyes went to the glass. “I wanted you to tell me there was a number. I might have asked you not to use the company's name when you called. I would still have been angry.”
“You were.”
“And you were gone before I could be anything else.”
Leonie took her hand away from the table. The old closeness had not made this conversation easier. It made her next omission harder to defend.
“Inez told me Miriam had written to her daughter,” Leonie said.
Ada's hand left the note. “When?”
“Early on. I remember one letter in particular. I never carried it or saw inside it. Inez said Miriam had sent it to the house.”
“Did you hear whether Nia received it?”
“No. Miriam didn't get an answer. I thought Nia might not want to.” Leonie heard how thin that sounded. “I didn't ask. That was a child's choice I invented from silence.”
Ada looked at her. “Nia told me she wasn't ready to say everything about the person in Westhaven.”
“She asked to speak for herself.”
“And she should. But I have to make a stop plan before she finds the right hour to tell it all.”
Leonie rose. “I'll speak to her.”
“What are you keeping?”
The direct question landed where Leonie had hoped their argument would delay it. She could say Miriam's name. She could say the meeting was voluntary and public, leave its location protected, and bear Nia's anger. Nia had just told her she would give Ada that fact before Moss Point. Leonie had promised one more conversation. The gap between those promises narrowed as the ferry ran on.
“Something about why Westhaven matters,” she said. “Nia said she'd tell you before Moss Point. I want to give her the chance.”
Ada did not mistake that for an answer. “How much time?”
“Let me find her now.”
“Find her. Tell her I need the fact that bears on the destination, not a private address. If she doesn't want to tell me, you come back and tell me what you know. I have to use the warning I have.”
Leonie could have heard command in Ada's words alone. She heard a time limit too, the one neither of them could change. “All right.”
At the door Ada said, “Cal wants that document to make you the sole liar.”
Leonie turned. “He wants it to make me untrustworthy to Nia.”
“Both can be true.”
“She'll hear from me,” Leonie said.
Ada opened the door. “See that she does.”
Nia was still at the lounge table, but she had turned her chair toward the windows. Leonie went to her without touching it.