Chương 8
For once, Mara did not care.
Patel put on gloves and lifted the envelope.
Something shifted inside.
“Anyone object to me opening this?”
Rebecca began, “Actually—”
“No,” Mara said.
Patel opened it.
A photograph slid into her gloved hand.
Mara recognized herself immediately.
She was younger, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, sitting in a hospital bed with her hair tied badly behind her head.
A blue wall was visible behind her.
Mara stopped breathing.
Daniel stepped off the porch.
“Mara?”
Patel raised a hand to keep him back.
Mara took one step toward the photograph.
There was no baby.
No obvious medical equipment.
Only Mara in a pale gown, looking away from whoever held the camera.
On the back, written in black ink, were three words.
SHE ASKED TWICE.
Mara stared until the letters blurred.
Rebecca whispered, “I’ve never seen that.”
Evan said, “Is it real?”
Mara could not answer.
The hospital gown meant nothing.
The room meant nothing.
Her own face meant everything.
There was a tiny scar above her right eyebrow, visible when she turned sideways.
She had gotten it at nineteen.
The woman in the photograph had it.
Daniel moved closer despite Patel’s warning.
“When was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mara.”
“I said I don’t know.”
His expression changed from confusion to something she recognized as fear.
Not fear for himself.
That unsettled her more.
“What?” she asked.
Daniel looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca looked back.
Mara stepped between them.
“What?”
Daniel rubbed his mouth.
“There was a year you wouldn’t talk about.”
“What year?”
“Before us.”
“That describes most years before us.”
“You used to wake up crying.”
Mara stared at him.
Rebecca said quietly, “Daniel.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“She deserves to know.”
“Know what?”
Daniel looked at Mara.
“The first year we lived together, you had nightmares.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I know.”
Something cold moved through her.
Daniel continued.
“You’d wake up and ask where she was.”
Mara’s throat tightened.
“Who?”
“You never said.”
Evan had become very still.
Daniel looked at the photograph in Patel’s hand.
“You would ask me to find her.”
Mara heard herself say, “That never happened.”
“It did.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“We slept in the same bed for nine years.”
“Seven.”
“What?”
“We stopped sleeping in the same bed two years ago.”
The correction was so painfully Daniel that Mara wanted to hit him.
Instead she said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I did.”
“No.”
“I asked you about it the next morning.”
“And?”
“You said I was imagining things.”
Mara looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca’s face had changed.
“What?”
Rebecca did not answer.
Mara stepped closer.
“What do you know?”
Rebecca looked toward Patel, then lowered her voice.
“Caleb found a prescription history.”
Mara waited.
“From when?”
“Nine years ago.”
“What prescription?”
Rebecca named a medication.
Patel’s eyes flicked toward her.
Mara did not recognize the name.
Rebecca said, “It can be used after severe trauma, anxiety, insomnia, several things.”
“Then it proves nothing.”
“By itself, no.”
“Good.”
Mara looked at Daniel.
“See?”
Daniel was not looking at her.
He was looking at the photograph.
“Your mother called me once.”
Mara froze.
“When?”
“The first time you woke up like that.”
“My mother was dead before we married.”
“We were living together.”
“What did she say?”
Daniel swallowed.
“She told me never to ask you about Annapolis.”
The blue room seemed to expand behind Mara’s eyes.
Not as an image.
As color.
A flat institutional blue.
A paper cup.
Someone humming.
A woman’s voice saying, You can see her after you sleep.
Mara grabbed the doorframe.
Evan moved toward her.
She held up a hand.
“Don’t.”
The memory vanished before she could reach for it.
Patel said, “Ma’am, sit down.”
“No.”
“Mara,” Daniel said.
“No.”
She looked at Rebecca.
“Where was Bellweather?”
Rebecca gave her the address.
Daniel made a sound.
Mara turned.
“What?”
He looked genuinely ill now.
“I know that address.”
Nobody moved.
Daniel reached into his coat and pulled out his phone.
His hands were shaking as he searched.
Finally he held up an old scanned document.
It was part of the divorce discovery file.
A bank statement belonging to Mara’s mother.
One payment had been highlighted months earlier for an unrelated property dispute.
Bellweather Family Services.
$18,400.
Mara stared at the date.
Nine years ago.
Three weeks after the photograph had been taken.
Officer Patel said, “I think everyone needs to stop investigating this in a doorway.”
Mara barely heard her.
Evan’s phone vibrated.
A new message had arrived from Caleb’s number.
This one contained only an address.
Rebecca read it over his shoulder.
“That’s not Bellweather.”
“No,” Evan said.
His face had drained of color.
“That’s my mother’s house.”
Then Noah called.
Evan answered before the second ring.
“Noah?”
For half a second there was only breathing.
Then Noah whispered, “Uncle Evan, somebody’s at the door.”
Evan’s face changed so fast that Mara felt the fear before she understood it.
“Where’s Grandma?”
“She went downstairs.”
“Get her back upstairs.”
“She told me to stay here.”
“Listen to me, Noah.”
Evan was already moving toward the porch.
“Lock the bedroom door.”
“It doesn’t have a lock.”
“Push something in front of it.”
Officer Patel stepped into his path.
“Give me the address.”
Evan recited it while Noah said, “I hear Grandma talking.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
Patel was speaking into her radio now, requesting units to the address.
Mara heard the change in her voice.
Whatever skepticism had existed minutes earlier was gone.
Evan pressed the phone against his ear.
“Noah, stay away from the window.”
“I am.”
“Can you get under the bed?”
“I’m eleven.”
“I know how old you are.”
“I don’t fit under the bed.”
Evan closed his eyes.
“Closet.”
“My baseball stuff is in there.”
“Noah.”
“Okay.”
A floorboard creaked through the phone.
Then Noah whispered, “Someone’s coming upstairs.”
Evan stopped moving.
Everyone else seemed to stop with him.
May you like
“Noah, hide.”
The line went quiet except for muffled movement.
