Chương 2
Noah asking if she would bring home the cereal with the little marshmallows even though she had told him three times they were not buying it anymore.
Daniel smiling from the couch.
Go, Em.
She had gone.
Now she searched his face for the man who had said it.
She found fear.
Not grief.
Fear.
Her own grief remained exactly where it had been, huge and immovable, but something colder opened inside it.
“How long were our boys still breathing?” she asked.
Daniel’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Hayes looked sharply at Emily, perhaps because the question suggested more than she could actually know.
Margaret whispered, “Don’t.”
Emily did not know whether Margaret meant Daniel or her.
Daniel looked toward the coffins.
Then toward the side exit.
Hayes noticed.
So did Emily.
Daniel stayed where he was.
The funeral never recovered.
The minister attempted to continue after Hayes asked Daniel to step into the vestibule, but grief had changed shape in the room. The hymns sounded embarrassed. People watched the Carter family instead of the altar.
Emily sat in the first pew with her hands locked around her phone.
Noah’s coffin was on the left because he had been born eleven minutes before Liam, and Emily had made the decision while sedated with exhaustion at the funeral home because even death had apparently required her to choose which child went where.
The absurdity of that had almost made her laugh.
She had been afraid to tell anyone.
People were already watching her for signs that she grieved incorrectly.
Margaret did not return to the pew.
Daniel did not return either.
When the minister invited the family forward at the end, Emily went alone.
She placed one hand on Noah’s coffin and one on Liam’s.
Nobody stopped her this time.
Her cheek still burned.
She leaned down between them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She did not know what part she meant.
The leaving.
The believing Daniel.
The years she had spent explaining away small things because marriages contained small things.
The fact that she was still alive.
Outside, funeral guests formed uncertain groups on the church steps. Some people approached Emily. Others did not.
Her sister, Claire, came through the crowd and put an arm around her without asking.
Claire was four years younger and normally incapable of remaining quiet when she believed silence was doing harm. Today she looked toward Margaret, who stood near a black sedan speaking fiercely to an attorney Emily recognized from Daniel’s company Christmas party.
“You want me to hit her back?” Claire asked.
Emily made a sound that surprised her.
It was almost a laugh.
“No.”
“I’m not saying I should. I’m asking what you want.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Claire squeezed her shoulder.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
Emily looked at her.
Claire’s mouth twitched once, then flattened when she realized Emily might actually cry.
The laugh had hurt more than the slap.
Across the parking lot, Detective Hayes stood with Daniel beside an unmarked car. Daniel kept rubbing the back of his neck. Margaret’s attorney had joined them.
Emily looked down at the unknown message again.
She typed one word.
WHO?
The answer came less than a minute later.
LENA ORTIZ. ACROSS THE ALLEY. POLICE NEVER ASKED FOR MY BACK CAMERA. CALL ME.
Emily knew the name.
Lena lived three houses behind them and ran a tax-preparation business from her dining room. Her husband had died two years earlier. She put ceramic frogs along her garden wall and gave Noah and Liam popsicles that Emily pretended not to know about because they liked believing they had a secret.
Emily stared at the message.
Claire read it over her shoulder.
“Oh,” she said.
That was all.
Emily pressed the number.
Lena answered on the first ring.
“Emily?”
Her voice broke immediately.
Emily closed her eyes.
“Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
“What does it show?”
A long pause.
Cars moved along the street beyond the church. Somewhere behind Emily, a funeral-home employee was discussing the cemetery route with the minister. People were still leaving. Ordinary things continued with offensive efficiency.
Lena said, “It shows his car.”
Emily waited.
“And him.”
Her stomach tightened.
“At the house?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before the smoke. And after.”
Emily opened her eyes.
Claire was watching her.
“What do you mean after?”
“I don’t want to tell you this over the phone.”
“Tell me.”
“Emily—”
“Tell me.”
Lena breathed in.
“My camera points toward the alley because somebody kept dumping trash behind my fence last winter. It catches the back of your garage and part of your yard. Daniel came outside.”
Emily pressed the phone harder to her ear.
“When?”
“I sent the file to Detective Hayes this morning. The timestamp says ten forty-three.”
Emily’s fingertips went numb.
The emergency call had been placed at 10:51.
She had memorized the time because the dispatcher’s log had appeared in the fire report.
“Was the house burning?”
“You can see smoke.”
Emily stopped breathing for a moment.
Lena continued quickly.
“I can’t tell what he knew. I can’t tell what he saw. I don’t want to say something I can’t prove.”
“What did he do?”
Another pause.
“He got in the car.”
Claire’s hand closed around Emily’s elbow.
Emily said, “He left?”
“Yes.”
“Did he call anyone?”
“The video doesn’t have sound from that far away.”
“He left?”
“Yes.”
Emily lowered the phone.
Her knees softened.
Claire guided her to a stone bench near the church wall.
For several seconds Emily watched Daniel across the parking lot.
He looked like a man waiting for a delayed flight.
He shifted his weight. Checked his attorney. Looked toward Hayes. Looked toward the church.
Then his eyes found Emily.
He knew.
Emily saw the moment he understood that Lena had told her.
Daniel looked away first.
Hayes came over twenty minutes later.
He did not sit.
“I need your phone.”
May you like
Emily handed it to him.
Claire said, “That’s it? She gets a text accusing her husband and you just take her phone?”
