Chương 3
Mara read it twice.
Evan leaned forward.
“What does it say?”
She handed him the note.
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
His mouth simply opened a little and stayed that way.
“You recognize the handwriting?”
“It’s Caleb’s.”
Mara plugged the drive into her laptop.
Evan rose.
“Wait.”
“You brought it here.”
“I know, but if Caleb was afraid enough to—”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
The drive appeared on the screen.
It contained a single folder.
Mara clicked it.
Thumbnail images began loading in rows.
For several seconds her mind refused to organize what she was seeing.
Then the first row sharpened.
Mara leaving her office.
Mara carrying groceries.
Mara sitting alone outside a coffee shop.
Mara unlocking the townhouse.
Mara at Daniel’s old house before the separation.
Mara at her mother’s birthday dinner.
Mara walking through an airport terminal.
Mara asleep beside the window on a train.
There were hundreds.
Some were recent.
Others were years old.
Her breathing became shallow.
Evan whispered, “Jesus.”
Mara scrolled.
The photographs kept loading.
Different seasons.
Different haircuts.
Different cars.
Some had been taken from across streets or through windows.
Others were close enough that whoever held the camera could not have been more than a few yards away.
Then Mara reached photographs dated five years earlier.
She stopped.
In one, she was standing outside a pediatric clinic she had never visited.
In another, she was crossing a playground she did not remember.
And in the next photograph, six-year-old Lucy Vale was three years younger, sitting in a stroller beside a woman whose face Mara could not see.
Lucy was pointing directly at Mara.
Mara’s hand slipped from the trackpad.
Evan said nothing.
A sound came from the front of the house.
Not the doorbell.
Three soft knocks.
Mara looked toward the hallway.
Her phone lit up beside the laptop.
A message had arrived from an unknown number.
She opened it.
Do not show Evan the photographs.
Across the table, Evan was already staring at her face.
Mara turned the phone facedown before Evan could read the screen.
The three knocks came again, patient and evenly spaced.
Evan looked toward the hallway.
“Are you expecting somebody?”
“No.”
“Then don’t open it.”
Mara hated that he had said exactly what she had already decided.
She closed the laptop, pulled the drive free, and slipped it into the pocket of her sweatshirt.
Evan noticed.
“So we’re not trusting each other now?”
“We met twelve minutes ago.”
“Fair point.”
A fourth knock sounded, harder this time.
Then a woman’s voice came through the door.
“Mara, it’s Rebecca.”
Mara exhaled.
Rebecca Sloan had represented her through nine months of divorce negotiations and possessed the unnerving habit of making emergencies sound like calendar adjustments.
Evan’s shoulders relaxed slightly.
Mara’s did not.
Rebecca had never visited the townhouse.
She had never needed to.
Mara crossed the hall and checked the doorbell feed before opening the door.
Rebecca stood beneath the porch light in a charcoal coat, leather portfolio tucked under one arm, her expression pinched with cold and annoyance.
“What are you doing here?”
Rebecca looked past Mara into the house.
“Apparently saving you from signing something stupid.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“It usually is.”
Mara stepped aside, then stopped.
“How did you know I was home?”
Rebecca frowned.
“You told me you were staying in tonight.”
“No, I didn’t.”
The pause was tiny.
Mara would not have noticed it yesterday.
Tonight, she noticed everything.
Rebecca recovered with a shrug.
“Daniel said you weren’t answering him, and your car’s outside.”
“You talked to Daniel?”
“I represent you in a divorce involving Daniel, so occasionally his existence becomes relevant.”
Behind Mara, a floorboard creaked.
Rebecca’s eyes moved over her shoulder.
“Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” Evan said from the kitchen.
Rebecca looked at Mara again.
“Who’s that?”
“Someone I met twelve minutes ago.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Come in.”
Rebecca entered, bringing cold air and the faint smell of peppermint gum with her.
She knew the townhouse well enough to walk toward the kitchen without being shown.
Mara noticed that too.
“You’ve been here before.”
Rebecca stopped.
“No.”
“You knew which way the kitchen was.”
“It’s a townhouse, Mara.”
“There are two doors off the entry.”
Rebecca stared at her.
“You’re acting strange.”
“That makes three of us.”
Evan had moved away from the table and was standing beside the counter.
Rebecca looked at him, then at the closed laptop.
“Rebecca Sloan.”
“Evan Rourke.”
Something passed through Rebecca’s face.
It was not recognition exactly.
It was the effort not to recognize.
Evan saw it.
Mara saw him see it.
“Have we met?” he asked.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Very.”
Mara’s phone vibrated in her hand.
She looked down.
Unknown number.
She opened the message.
Rebecca knows why Lucy recognized you.
Mara felt the room contract around the three of them.
Rebecca was removing her gloves finger by finger.
Evan watched her with the fixed attention of a man trying to remember a face from somewhere unpleasant.
Mara put the phone in her pocket.
“What did you need me not to sign?”
Rebecca placed the portfolio on the island.
“The revised property agreement.”
“You emailed me this afternoon saying it was routine.”
“I reviewed the final language again.”
“And?”
“There’s a waiver I don’t like.”
“Which waiver?”
Rebecca opened the portfolio.
Her hands were steady.
Mara looked at those hands and suddenly remembered Lucy’s mother gripping the child’s wrist in the pharmacy.
People could control their hands when they had practice.
“What’s her name?” Mara asked.
Rebecca looked up.
“Whose?”
“The woman from the pharmacy.”
Evan went still.
Rebecca’s expression did not change.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Lucy Vale’s mother.”
The name landed.
Rebecca’s thumb pressed into the edge of the paper hard enough to bend it.
Evan whispered, “You do know.”
Rebecca closed the portfolio.
“I think I should leave.”
Mara stepped between her and the hallway.
“No.”
“Mara.”
May you like
“You came to my house uninvited.”
“I came because of your settlement.”
