Chương 9
She looked at the screen and saw her coworker’s name.
She let it ring until it stopped.
Mara had spent most of the past year becoming very good at not answering questions she was not ready to answer.
That skill had helped her survive.
It had also made her lonely.
The blue notebook was not hard to remember.
Daniel had one during the last year before he vanished.
He carried it everywhere.
He wrote numbers in it, names, dates, random observations that seemed meaningless to everyone except him.
When investigators searched his apartment after his disappearance, they said they found nothing important.
Mara had asked about the notebook.
The detective handling the case had looked at her for a long moment before saying Daniel owned many notebooks.
She remembered that because it was the first time she realized the investigation was not really about finding him.
It was about closing the file.
She had hated herself for thinking that.
She had also never stopped thinking it.
Mara walked to the hallway closet and pulled open the top shelf.
The old storage boxes were still there.
Christmas decorations.
Tax documents.
A broken lamp she kept promising herself she would repair.
She dragged the boxes down and placed them on the floor.
The apartment filled with the sounds of ordinary things being moved around.
Tape peeling.
Cardboard scraping.
Her own breathing.
She almost felt normal again.
Almost.
The notebook was not in the closet.
It was not in the bedroom.
It was not inside the kitchen cabinets where Daniel sometimes hid things when he was younger because he believed nobody looked in boring places.
By midnight, the apartment looked like someone had searched it.
Mara sat on the floor surrounded by old photographs and forgotten objects.
She held a picture of herself and Daniel standing outside their parents’ old house.
He was seventeen.
She was twenty-one.
He was making an exaggerated angry face because she had forced him to take the photo.
She had forgotten that he used to hate pictures.
She had also forgotten that he smiled immediately after the camera clicked.
A knock came from the front door.
Mara froze.
Nobody visited her without texting first.
She looked toward the hallway.
Another knock followed.
Not louder.
Just more certain.
She stood slowly.
“Who is it?”
A pause.
Then a woman answered.
“Mara, it’s Lena.”
Mara knew the name.
Lena Price had been Daniel’s closest friend before everything changed.
She had also been the person who stopped returning Mara’s calls six months after Daniel disappeared.
Mara opened the door only halfway.
Lena looked older than she remembered.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that Mara understood time had been happening to other people too.
“You got it,” Lena said.
Mara did not respond.
Lena looked past her shoulder and saw the apartment.
“You found the letter.”
“How do you know about the letter?”
Lena’s expression shifted.
That was the first thing Mara noticed.
Not fear.
Not surprise.
Calculation.
It lasted only a second.
But Daniel had taught her to notice small changes in people.
“He sent one to me too,” Lena said.
Mara opened the door wider.
“What?”
Lena stepped inside but stopped near the entrance.
She did not behave like someone coming home.
She behaved like someone entering a place where she was not sure she was welcome.
“What did yours say?” Mara asked.
Lena looked at the floor.
“That he was sorry.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Mara stared at her.
Lena rubbed her hands together.
A nervous habit.
Mara remembered Daniel mentioning it years ago.
“She does that when she lies,” he had said.
Mara had laughed.
“You think you can read everyone?”
“No,” Daniel had answered.
“Just the people who think nobody is watching.”
“What else did he say?” Mara asked.
Lena looked toward the kitchen table.
“The same thing he told me three years ago.”
The room became quiet.
Mara felt something tighten in her chest.
“What are you talking about?”
Lena swallowed.
“Daniel wasn’t running away.”
Mara hated how quickly she believed those words.
Not because they made sense.
Because some part of her had been waiting for someone to say them.
“The police said he left voluntarily.”
“I know.”
“They said his bank account activity showed he was alive.”
“I know.”
“They said he probably wanted a new life.”
Lena looked at her.
“That was the story everyone needed.”
Mara stepped back.
“What does that mean?”
Lena did not answer immediately.
Outside, someone shouted on the sidewalk.
A car horn sounded twice.
A dog barked somewhere in the building.
The world continued like it had no idea that everything Mara believed about the last three years was starting to crack.
“Daniel found something,” Lena finally said.
“Something about what?”
Lena looked at the open letter on the table.
“About why people were trying so hard to make him disappear.”
Mara wanted to ask a hundred questions.
Instead she asked the one that scared her most.
“Is he alive?”
Lena’s eyes moved away.
That was answer enough.
But not the answer Mara needed.
“I don’t know,” Lena said.
Mara laughed bitterly.
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“I know.”
“You either know or you don’t.”
“I know what he wanted me to believe.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Lena said quietly.
“It isn’t.”
For a moment neither of them moved.
Mara looked at the letter again.
The apology bothered her more than anything else.
Daniel was many things.
Careless sometimes.
Stubborn almost always.
Secretive when he thought he was protecting someone.
But he was never casual with apologies.
If he wrote those two words, he believed he had caused real harm.
The question was who he thought he was protecting.
And who he thought he was protecting them from.
Lena reached into her coat pocket and removed a small object wrapped in a tissue.
She placed it on the table.
Mara stared at it.
It was a key.
Old.
May you like
Brass.
Attached to a faded plastic tag with a number written in black marker.
