Chapter 10 - The Door at Harbor House
Rose was still staring at the picture when her phone rang. It was Sonia.
"There was a man outside after you left," she said. "He asked which entrance the night staff use. I told him to get off the property."
Rose told Torres, who arranged extra patrols and advised Harbor House to preserve its door-camera footage. She also asked Rose to stay somewhere secure while they traced the threats.
Nathaniel offered a guest apartment on a guarded floor of the hotel. Rose refused the first offer and accepted the second: a modest furnished place leased through Amelia's office, with no family name on the door.
"You are stubborn," Nathaniel said.
"I learned from a seventy-year-old woman who wouldn't sell a building."
He almost smiled.
Eleanor left the hospital two days later. At her request, she went first to Harbor House, not to her apartment. Children ran to greet her. Sonia cried, then pretended she had something in her eye.
Rose stood beside Eleanor near the old stairwell. The older woman studied a faded photograph on the wall: a holiday dinner from fifteen years earlier.
"That little girl in the green sweater," Eleanor said. "Was that you?"
Rose nodded. "My mother had just lost her job. You asked if I wanted another helping of pie."
"You told me you wanted to be a chef."
Rose laughed in surprise. "You remember?"
"You corrected my recipe. I remember people who correct my recipes."
For a moment, the roof disappeared from Rose's thoughts.
Then Sonia came down the stairs holding a brown envelope. She had found it wedged beneath the rear door, with no stamp and no sender.
May you like
Inside was a photograph of Eleanor outside the hospital, taken the previous afternoon, and a page from the foundation's confidential board packet.
Across the page someone had written: THE OLD WOMAN GETS ONE MORE WARNING.
