Rocco called Marco that night.

Not from the house phone.

From the small prepaid phone June had bought that afternoon at a drugstore two miles away.

She had thought of it without being asked.

Rocco had noticed that about her — she thought three steps ahead without making it visible.

He dialed from the back garden, sitting in the dark with a blanket across his knees, the night air cool and clean in a way the inside of the house had stopped feeling.

Marco answered on the third ring.

"Papa?" His voice was surprised.

Cautious.

"Is everything all right?

This number isn't—"

"I'm using a different phone," Rocco said.

"I need you to listen to me.

All the way through.

Don't say anything until I finish."

A pause.

"Okay."

Rocco told him.

He kept it factual, the way Drent had advised — the bottle, the letter, the false medication logs, the guardianship petition, the clause in the estate documents.

He read from the notes June had helped him organize.

He didn't editorialize.

He didn't accuse.

He let the facts move in sequence, one after another, and he waited.

When he finished, the line was quiet for a long time.

"Papa," Marco said finally.

His voice had changed.

"She told me — she said you'd been refusing the medication.

That you'd become — that the doctors were worried you couldn't manage—"

"I know what she told you."

"I believed her." The words came out rough.

"I believed her because the reports — she sent me reports, Papa.

With dates.

With doctor's signatures."

"The signatures were falsified," Rocco said.

"Paul Drent has the pharmacy records.

There was one bottle.

One.

Filled six weeks ago.

Still nearly full when June found it."

Another silence.

"Who is June?"

"The caretaker Lucia tried to fire this morning.

The one who didn't leave."

Marco exhaled.

It was a long, unsteady sound.

"I'm coming home," he said.

"Not yet." Rocco kept his voice steady.

"If you come home now, Lucia will know something has changed.

She'll move faster.

Drent needs two more weeks to build the counter-filing correctly."

"You want me to stay in Portugal while—"

"I want you to trust me for two weeks.

Can you do that?"

The silence this time was different.

Heavier.

"I should have called you directly," Marco said.

"I should have — I kept letting her manage the communication because she said you found the calls upsetting.

That they triggered episodes."

"They don't," Rocco said.

"I know that now." His son's voice broke slightly on the last word.

"Papa, I'm sorry.

I didn't—"

"Marco." Rocco stopped him gently.

"There will be time for that.

Right now I need you steady.

Can you be steady?"

A breath.

Then: "Yes."

"Good." Rocco looked up at the sky.

Clear tonight.

More stars than he remembered being able to see from this garden.

"There's one more thing.

Drent found a clause in my estate documents.

Co-signatory authority over medical decisions.

I don't remember signing it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means someone may have altered those documents.

Or had me sign something I didn't fully understand during a bad episode." He paused.

"I need you to find the copy you were given when the estate was originally drawn up.

The original.

Not any version Lucia may have sent you."

"I have it," Marco said immediately.

"It's in the safe here.

I never moved it."

"Compare it to what Drent sends you tomorrow.

Page by page."

"I will." A beat.

"Papa — are you safe right now?

Is she—"

"I'm in the garden," Rocco said.

"June is in the house.

And Lucia thinks I went to bed an hour ago." He almost smiled.

"I'm fine, Marco.

For the first time in months, I'm actually fine."

He ended the call and sat for a while in the dark.

Inside, through the kitchen window, he could see the light still on.

June was at the table, writing something in the small notebook she carried.

Making her own records.

Her own log.

Dated, timed, witnessed by no one but herself — and therefore, Drent had said, admissible.

Rocco hadn't asked her to do that.

She had simply understood that it needed to be done.

He thought about the morning she arrived.

Lucia's face when June had refused to leave the room during the episode.

The particular quality of that refusal — not dramatic, not confrontational.

Just immovable.

Some people, Rocco thought, were simply built that way.

He was grateful, in a way that had no adequate words, that she had walked through his door.

Inside, June looked up from her notebook toward the window.

She couldn't see him in the dark.

But she left the kitchen light on anyway.