I took Dalton off hold.
“Sir. I booked them a room. Residence Inn on Wilson Boulevard. Under my name. Three nights. Can someone make sure they get there safely?”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Keane,” Dalton said finally. “You sure?”
“No,” I said. “But the kids are.”
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll drive them myself.”
I watched it happen on the camera.
Officer Dunleavy explained to Paige that she had to leave. Paige argued. Then she cried. Then she went quiet when Dunleavy said the words “if you refuse, I’ll have to place you under arrest, and your children will be released to Child Protective Services until a family member can be found.”
Paige went into the guest room. I couldn’t see in there; I don’t have cameras in the bedrooms. But a few minutes later she came out carrying Ben, who was asleep on her shoulder. Lily walked behind her, holding her stuffed rabbit and her backpack, blinking in the hallway light.
Lily looked up at the camera above the front door.
She waved at it. A small, sleepy wave.
“Bye, Aunt Rissa,” she said.
I put my hand over my mouth.
Dalton and the other marshal, a woman named Torres, helped carry the suitcases down to Paige’s car. Curtis brought a luggage cart. Officer Dunleavy wrote out the summons on the hood of her cruiser and handed it to Paige.
Then Dalton walked back upstairs alone. He went down my hallway and looked at the cracked keypad. He took photos. He checked the door. He put a strip of evidence tape across the frame.
Then he stood in my empty living room for a second, looking around. At my bookshelves. At the view of the river.
He looked up at the living room camera.
“Go back to sleep, Keane,” he said. “You’ve got a transfer at nine.”
I didn’t go back to sleep.
At 4:15 a.m. London time, my phone rang. It was my mother.
I let it ring four times. Then I answered.
“Marissa.” Her voice was shaking. “What did you do? What did you do to your sister?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“She called me crying from a hotel. A hotel! In the middle of the night! With the children! She said the police came. She said federal agents came. She said they put tape on your door. What is wrong with you?”
“Mom,” I said. “Paige broke into my apartment with a code nobody gave her. She tried to break into my office with a fireplace poker. And I watched all of it. And I heard you. On speakerphone. Telling her I wouldn’t have the heart to make her leave.”
Silence.
“And I heard Dad,” I said. “Telling her to change her mail. And to keep the paper in her purse.”
More silence. Longer.
“Is Dad there?” I asked.
I heard muffled voices. Then my father came on the line.
“Marissa.” His voice was calm. That careful voice. The red-pen voice. “Listen to me. You’re upset. I understand. But there’s no reason to involve the police in a family matter.”
“Dad. How did Paige get my maintenance code?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Dad.”
“I called the building,” he said finally. “The management office. I told them I had your power of attorney. I sent them a copy. I asked them for any active access codes for your unit. They gave me the one for the plumber.”
I closed my eyes. Of course they did. A notarized power of attorney. A polite older man on the phone. Why wouldn’t they?
“And the lease,” I said.
“The lease protects everybody,” he said. “Your sister and the kids need stability. You’re never home. It’s a big empty apartment. This way it’s done properly. Legally. Nobody has to fight about it.”
“You signed my name.”
“I signed as your agent. That’s what the power of attorney is for.”
“No, Dad,” I said. “That’s not what it’s for. It’s for protecting me. Not for giving my home away.”
Chapter Eight: Revoked
I finished my assignment in London. I want to say that clearly, because it mattered to me.
At nine o’clock that morning, I stood in a cold room at a police station in Manchester with two British detectives and a man who’d been on the U.S. Marshals’ most-wanted list for six years. I did my job. I signed every form. I did it right.
Then I flew home two days later, on a Thursday, nine hours across the Atlantic. I didn’t sleep on the plane. I sat by the window and made a list on a napkin.
At the top of the list, I wrote: Revoke POA.
My lawyer’s name was Elaine Park. She’d drafted the original power of attorney four years earlier. Her office was in a brick building in Courthouse, near the Arlington County Circuit Court.
I went straight there from Dulles Airport, with my suitcase.
Elaine read the lease Dalton had photographed. She read the power of attorney she’d written herself. Then she put both down on her desk and looked at me over her glasses.
“Your father had no authority to do this,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Marissa, I wrote the document. I know what’s in it.” She tapped the page. “Under the Virginia Uniform Power of Attorney Act, an agent has to act in good faith, within the scope of the authority granted, and in the principal’s best interest. That’s you. Not your sister. Not your father. You.”
“He says he was protecting the family.”
“He’s not your agent for the family,” she said. “He’s your agent for you.” She picked up the lease. “A twelve-month lease of your home to his other daughter for one dollar a month is, for all practical purposes, a gift. And Virginia law says an agent can’t make gifts of the principal’s property unless the power of attorney expressly grants that authority. Yours doesn’t. I made sure it didn’t.”
She drafted a revocation of the power of attorney that afternoon. I signed it in front of a notary in her lobby, with a capital M that I made myself.
Elaine sent certified copies to my father. To my bank. To my building’s management company, with a letter instructing them to delete every access code for my unit and never to give information about my home to anyone but me.
“And the lease?” I asked.
“I’m sending a letter to your sister today,” she said. “And to your father. Stating that the lease is void, that it was executed without authority, and that no tenancy exists. If she tries to use it in court, or tries to claim residency with the post office or the school district, we’ll be ready.”
“Will she?”
Elaine took off her glasses.
“That depends on your father,” she said. “Does he usually back down?”
I thought about the red pen. The atlas. The road trips.
“No,” I said.
