Chương 6
Mara’s skin tightened.
“Who?”
“Caleb.”
The glass slipped in Mara’s wet hand and struck the sink without breaking.
“No.”
“Four months ago.”
“No.”
“You were at the county courthouse for a settlement conference.”
Mara looked at Rebecca.
A courthouse hallway surfaced in pieces.
Bad coffee.
Daniel’s attorney complaining about parking.
A man near the elevators asking whether the vending machine took cards.
Mara had lent him two dollars because he had looked embarrassed.
She had forgotten him before the elevator doors opened.
Her eyes moved to Evan.
He took out his phone, found a photograph, and held it toward her.
Caleb was standing beside a boy who had Noah’s narrow shoulders and serious mouth.
Mara stared at Caleb.
The courthouse returned all at once.
“That was him.”
Evan lowered the phone.
“He spoke to you?”
“He asked for vending-machine money.”
Rebecca said, “He was trying to see whether you recognized him.”
“I didn’t.”
“He told me.”
Evan looked sick.
“My brother stalked her at a courthouse?”
“He was afraid.”
“That doesn’t make it less creepy.”
“No.”
Rebecca accepted the accusation without defending him.
That made Evan angrier.
Mara unfolded the photocopy.
Most of it was a list of codes and dates from nine years earlier.
Near the bottom, one line had been circled.
Patient M-17.
Guardian authorization: E. Vale.
Mara read it twice.
“Vale.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Lucy’s last name.”
“Who is E. Vale?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then why is this about me?”
Rebecca tapped a number beside the patient code.
It was an insurance identifier.
Mara recognized the final four digits before she understood why.
Her father had written them on tax folders for years.
“That was my policy.”
“Your parents’ policy, at the time.”
“I was twenty-six.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t a child.”
“No.”
Evan leaned over the page.
“What was Bellweather treating?”
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
Mara looked at her.
“Say it.”
“Postpartum psychiatric complications.”
The kitchen became perfectly still.
Mara laughed.
It came out once, harsh and involuntary.
“No.”
Rebecca’s eyes stayed on her.
“No.”
Mara pushed the paper away.
“I have never been pregnant.”
Evan said nothing.
That was worse than arguing.
Mara pointed at Rebecca.
“I would know.”
“Yes.”
“I would know if I gave birth.”
“Yes.”
“Stop saying yes like that.”
Rebecca’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t know what happened to you.”
“Apparently everyone keeps not knowing extremely specific things.”
“Mara.”
“No.”
She shoved the chair aside and went toward the stairs.
Evan followed her into the hall.
“Where are you going?”
“To prove this is garbage.”
“How?”
“My medical records.”
Rebecca called after her.
“Electronic records may not go back far enough.”
Mara stopped on the first stair.
“That sounded prepared.”
“I checked.”
Mara turned slowly.
“You accessed my medical records?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Caleb checked.”
Evan swore under his breath.
Mara came back down.
“He accessed my records illegally?”
“I don’t know how he got them.”
“Your answer to everything is that you don’t know.”
“Because I am not going to invent certainty to make this easier for you.”
For the first time that night, Mara believed her.
She hated that too.
Evan’s phone vibrated on the counter.
They all looked at it.
It was not Noah.
A message from Caleb’s number appeared.
Evan crossed the room and opened it.
There was no text.
Only an audio file.
He touched play.
Static filled the kitchen, followed by a scraping sound.
Then Caleb’s voice came through, low and hurried.
“Evan, if you’re hearing this, I screwed up.”
Evan stopped breathing.
Caleb continued.
“I thought I could get the original intake files before they noticed the audit trail.”
Something struck metal in the background.
“I was wrong.”
The recording broke into static for several seconds.
When Caleb’s voice returned, he sounded farther away.
“Don’t trust the photographs.”
Mara looked toward the laptop.
“The dates are real, but the woman isn’t.”
Rebecca whispered, “Oh God.”
Caleb coughed.
“Lucy recognized Mara because somebody taught her to.”
Mara’s knees weakened.
Evan reached for the phone as though touching it could pull his brother closer.
Then Caleb said, “But the blue room is real.”
A door slammed somewhere in the recording.
Caleb’s next words came fast.
“Mara was there.”
The file ended.
No one spoke.
Evan played it again.
The second time was worse because they knew exactly where the voice would stop.
Mara stood with one hand against the island.
Rebecca was staring at the billing record.
Evan played the final seconds a third time.
Mara was there.
He lowered the phone.
“When was this sent?”
“Just now,” Rebecca said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Evan opened the file information.
His thumb stopped moving.
“What?”
Mara stepped closer.
The recording had been created at 9:14 the previous morning.
Seventeen minutes before Caleb Rourke had last been seen entering the Halcyon Bridge parking garage.
The message had waited more than thirty hours before reaching Evan’s phone.
Rebecca reached for her coat.
“We leave now.”
This time Mara did not argue.
She grabbed the laptop, the drive, and her keys.
Evan took the billing record.
They were halfway to the front door when Mara noticed something beneath it.
A white envelope had been pushed through the narrow gap between the door and the floor.
Her name was written across the front.
Not printed.
Written.
Mara bent down.
Rebecca caught her wrist.
“Don’t touch it.”
Mara looked at the envelope.
Then at Rebecca.
Then at the uncovered strip of darkness beside the front window.
A small blue crayon rolled out from beneath the envelope and stopped against Mara’s shoe.
Mara stared at the crayon without bending to pick it up.
It was worn flat on one side, the paper wrapper peeled back in ragged strips, the kind of object a child might lose under a restaurant table.
Rebecca pulled Mara away from the door.
“Back up.”
Evan was already reaching for his phone.
“Police?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Yes.”
May you like
Mara looked at her.
“Five minutes ago you said calling them could make Caleb harder to find.”
