“Did you think you were doing the right thing?” Noelle asked, exasperated. It shouldn’t matter, because she was done with Miriam, but she wanted to understand what would drive someone to make the choices Ziva had. Noelle could barely leave Miriam alone when she needed to, and Ziva, her own mother, had left her to the wolves.

Ziva shook her head. “I was mostly worried about getting myself through, every day.”

“You should have made Miriam safe.”

Ziva smiled without warmth. “Have you never made decisions out of your worst fears instead of your better instincts?”

Fuck. Of course she had, so many times since Cass’s death, and she’d asked for Miriam’s forgiveness, for a chance to do better, which Miriam had given her.

When Noelle didn’t speak, Ziva continued, tapping her perfect manicure against Cass’s favorite chipped Spode. “The thing is, I had a choice, but I didn’t really understand that. Miriam didn’t have a choice, and she was excruciatingly aware of it. What she tried to do the other day was to take some agency, to do the opposite of what I did. To save you from Richard, the way I didn’t save her from him. It was misguided and hurtful, I’m not denying that, but she did something I never did. She tried to protect the people she loved at great cost to herself.”

The idea that Noelle might have judged Miriam too harshly—again, exactly like she’d done when they met—had been creeping like a kudzu vine into her stubborn mind. She was starting to suspect she might be the one of them using any excuse to run because she was afraid.

“Why are you so angry about this, Noelle?” Ziva asked, looking pointedly over her coffee cup. “Is Miriam yours to protect now?”

“Miriam is her own to protect,” Noelle growled, pushing back from the table, “and the rest of it is none of your business. You gave up any right to know anything about Miriam and me years before you met me.”

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Miriam

Unwrapping her paintings restored a missing piece of herself, and it felt strangely like having her heart broken and handed back to her all at once. The paintings were from a time before she’d cut herself off. They had been made by a Miriam who still felt deeply, hoped for things, took risks.

She laid the five canvases out on the floor of the carriage house. Seeing them now crystallized her resolve. She’d given up painting because of her father, given up Carrigan’s and Cass, Hannah, Levi, the Matthewses. Given up nearly every component of who she was, and now she was losing Noelle, too, because of him.

Miriam felt the urge to destroy him—and knew with absolute clarity that she would never again make her own life small for Richard Blum.