Chương 13
His mother had sold the house after his father died.
The basement stairs had been painted a dark brick red sometime in the nineties.
Rachel had stored boxes there during the last year of her life because their apartment lacked space.
Daniel’s pulse began to beat harder.
“Why do you remember that?”
Caroline stepped between them verbally before he could continue.
“Lily, it’s late.”
Lily looked toward the clock.
It was barely nine.
“I’m not tired.”
“You don’t have to sleep,” Mara said.
“You can lie in bed and judge my terrible book collection.”
“Do you have Harry Potter?”
“I said terrible, not nonexistent.”
Lily smiled faintly.
She started upstairs, then turned.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sleeping here?”
“Yes.”
She looked at Caroline.
“With Aunt Mara supervising?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Mara coughed into her fist.
Caroline said, “Yes.”
“That’s weird.”
“It is extremely weird,” Daniel said.
Lily nodded, apparently satisfied that somebody had admitted it, and continued upstairs.
When the door closed, Mara said, “At least humiliation has restored your parenting instincts.”
Daniel ignored her.
“Fulton Street.”
She stopped smiling.
“What about it?”
“Rachel kept boxes in Mom’s basement.”
“I remember.”
“Did any come to my house after Mom sold?”
Mara thought.
“Probably.”
“Probably isn’t useful.”
“I wasn’t maintaining a manifest, Daniel.”
“Who moved them?”
“You, me, Mom, that college kid you hired.”
“Vanessa?”
“No.”
Mara paused.
“Wait.”
Daniel watched her.
“She helped Mom clear the basement.”
“When?”
“The weekend before closing.”
Daniel felt his shoulders tighten.
He and Vanessa had been dating then, not yet engaged.
He had been in Pittsburgh for work.
“Did she take anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mara.”
“I don’t know.”
Mara’s irritation sharpened.
“There were forty years of your parents’ garbage down there.”
“Rachel’s things weren’t garbage.”
“I didn’t mean Rachel’s things.”
“Then don’t call them that.”
The silence afterward was immediate and ugly.
Mara looked away.
Daniel regretted the outburst but could not make himself apologize yet.
Caroline said, “This is exactly why nobody should build a theory tonight.”
Daniel turned on her.
“A note in my dead wife’s handwriting appears in a bag hidden in my basement after my current wife had access to boxes my dead wife stored somewhere else.”
“Yes.”
“And my daughter somehow knows about the bag.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t find that concerning?”
“I find all of it concerning.”
Caroline gathered her papers.
“That is different from knowing what it means.”
Aaron’s phone buzzed.
He read the message and looked at Caroline.
“She’s at the motel.”
Daniel understood he meant Vanessa.
“Which motel?”
Aaron hesitated.
“Daniel.”
“I’m not going there.”
“The Lakeside Inn.”
Mara snorted.
“That place charges eighty dollars for sheets that feel like legal documents.”
Aaron looked at her.
“You review hotels often?”
“I had a divorce.”
Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose.
Daniel almost laughed.
The sound came out more like a cough.
The moment passed quickly, but he needed it.
Caroline gave Mara instructions for the night and told Daniel she would return in the morning.
She asked him not to contact Vanessa except about immediate practical matters involving safety.
Daniel agreed.
He meant it when he said it.
Ten minutes after they left, he texted Vanessa.
Where did you get the note?
Her reply arrived before he could put down the phone.
I found it in the bag.
That wasn’t what I asked.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Returned.
Finally she wrote, I didn’t write it.
Daniel stared at the message.
Mara came behind him.
“You promised.”
“I promised not to start a confrontation.”
“That looks like the opening credits of a confrontation.”
He put the phone away.
Mara locked the front door.
“I made up the couch.”
“I’ll take the floor upstairs.”
“You heard Caroline.”
“She said you supervise.”
“She did not say I need to watch you sleep like a prison guard.”
“I want to be near Lily.”
Mara’s face softened.
“Okay.”
Daniel climbed the stairs.
Lily’s door was open a few inches.
He knocked.
No answer.
He pushed it wider.
She was asleep sideways across the bed, still wearing her jeans, with the pillow wall partly collapsed around her.
The backpack rested against her chest.
Daniel stood there until Mara appeared behind him.
“You should sleep.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Then pretend.”
She handed him a blanket.
Daniel spread it on the hallway floor outside Lily’s room.
Mara went downstairs.
He lay on his back staring at the ceiling.
At 10:17, his phone buzzed.
Vanessa had sent another message.
I remembered something about the note.
Daniel sat up.
What?
The reply took almost a minute.
Rachel’s handwriting isn’t the part you should be looking at.
Daniel typed, Then what?
Vanessa answered.
The paper.
He stared at the message.
What about it?
Another pause.
When I found the bag, the note was already old, but the yellow pad it came from wasn’t.
Daniel stopped breathing for a moment.
He opened Aaron’s photograph in his mind: the yellow sheet, the clean ruled lines, the torn upper edge.
His phone buzzed again.
Vanessa wrote, You bought that legal pad in March.
Daniel rose quietly and walked downstairs.
Mara was asleep on the couch with the television playing silently.
Her laptop sat open on the coffee table.
Daniel woke the screen and searched the shared household account he and Vanessa used for office supplies.
He found the order.
Three yellow legal pads, delivered March 11.
Rachel had been dead for more than five years.
Daniel sat back.
The handwriting could have been copied.
The warning could have been manufactured.
The bag could have been staged.
But one fact remained stubbornly separate from every explanation involving Vanessa.
Lily had known where it was.
Daniel returned upstairs.
His daughter had rolled onto her side.
The backpack had slipped from her arms and fallen open on the floor.
The freezer bag protruded halfway out.
Daniel bent to tuck it back inside.
Something beneath it caught the hallway light.
A photograph.
May you like
He pulled it out.
It showed Rachel standing in his mother’s old basement beside the red stairs, laughing at whoever held the camera.
