Building security flagged your badge, she said. 3:00 a.m. on Christmas. I forgot something. It triggers an automatic review over the holidays. They pulled the hallway footage. She paused. There’s a baby in it, Jude. They sent the clip to the cleaning contractor yesterday. That’s the procedure. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t reported anyone, but he had come back in the middle of the night, and that was enough.
That evening, he unfolded the note from inside the music box and dialed the number at the bottom. She answered on the fourth ring, cautious.
Hello, it’s Jude Tolbert.
Silence.
I didn’t report you, he said. My badge set off a security review. The footage went to your company automatically. I didn’t know until this morning.
More silence. He could hear a baby babbling somewhere behind her.
Okay, Hadley said finally.
He understood that it wasn’t belief. It was a door left open an inch.
How is she? He asked. Better. Loud. Good.
He didn’t apologize for the system. He didn’t promise to fix anything. The music box is still here, he said. I said I’d pay for it or fix it.
Her voice steadied. I’d rather fix it. My grandfather repaired watches. He taught me how springs work before I could ride a bike.
You don’t have to. I wrote it down. Hadley said that means I do.
He found he had nothing to say to that.
On Friday morning, Hadley left May with the neighbor upstairs for 1 hour and took the bus to the address Gil had sent. Varner Building Services ran out of a converted garage behind a brick ranch house off Clinton Highway. Mop buckets by the door, a space heater ticking in the corner. Gil Varner was 54. He had started his company with one mop and a borrowed van, and he looked like a man who’d been carrying both ever since. He didn’t yell. He looked tired.
