“That’s not necessarily true.”
Both of them turned.
Nora’s heartbeat sounded loud in her ears.
“He can answer simple questions,” she said. “Not every time, and not quickly. But he understands.”
Mrs. Gable gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “She’s been playing games with him.”
“Show me,” Lorenzo said.
Nora approached Giovanni slowly.
“John, if you want me to tell your son what I’ve noticed, look at the window.”
His eyes moved toward the closed curtains.
“If you want me to keep it private, look at the door.”
He kept looking at the window.
Lorenzo stared at him.
Nora asked a few neutral questions with answers she already knew. She did not present the demonstration as a medical diagnosis. She explained that a qualified clinician needed to assess his ability to communicate.
But Lorenzo was looking at his father as though he had just heard his voice through a wall.
“Dad,” he whispered, “have you been aware all this time?”
Giovanni blinked once.
The room became very quiet.
Mrs. Gable recovered first. “Mr. Moretti, she’s an untrained employee. This could be coincidence.”
“It could,” Lorenzo said. “We’ll have a professional evaluate him.”
He took out his phone and instructed someone to contact the hospital that had treated his father after the stroke.
Then he turned to Nora.
“Tell me what happens here when I’m away.”
Mrs. Gable stepped forward. “You should know her work has been unsatisfactory. She refuses reasonable duties and invents complaints.”
Nora felt tears burn behind her eyes. Her apartment, the baby’s clothes folded in a grocery bag, the stack of bills on her kitchen counter—all of it seemed to balance on the next sentence.
She could protect her job by staying quiet.
Or she could tell the truth she’d been writing down for four weeks.
She took the notebook from her apron.
“I wrote it down because I didn’t want to make accusations I couldn’t support,” she said. “These are dates, meals, and things I personally saw. I don’t know why the care arrangements changed. I only know what was happening when I came in.”
Lorenzo accepted the notebook but didn’t open it immediately.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked.
