Chương 3
Daniel moved between him and Claire.
“Don’t.”
Ethan held the phone at his side.
“You planning to hit me too?”
Daniel said.
“I’m planning not to.”
“Then leave.”
“I drove her here.”
“This is our house.”
Ethan glanced at the kennel.
“You should probably stop using that sentence like it helps you.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
Claire reached out.
“Phone.”
Ethan handed it over.
Her thumb trembled against the screen.
There were seventeen notifications.
Two were from the treatment center.
One was from the pharmacy.
The rest meant nothing to her in that moment.
She opened the keypad.
Daniel said, “If you call them before I explain, this gets worse.”
Claire looked up.
“For who?”
“For Lily.”
That stopped her.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she no longer trusted anything.
Lily’s breathing had settled against her neck, but the child’s body remained rigid whenever Melina shifted her weight.
Claire lowered the phone.
“One minute.”
Daniel exhaled.
Melina said, “Daniel, don’t.”
He ignored her.
“The woman Lily keeps talking about isn’t real.”
Claire waited.
“That’s your explanation?”
“No.”
Daniel rubbed his jaw where Ethan had struck him.
“Lily started seeing her after visiting you.”
“Children imagine people.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then why was she in a kennel?”
Daniel looked toward his mother.
Melina stared back with open contempt.
“Tell her yourself,” Daniel said.
Melina’s mouth hardened.
“I was keeping the child from hurting herself.”
Claire felt her hand tighten around the phone.
“By locking her in a dog kennel.”
“She ran into the street yesterday.”
Claire looked at Daniel.
He did not deny it.
“She what?”
“She got out through the side gate,” he said.
“I was in the shower.”
“And your mother?”
“At the grocery store.”
Claire’s gaze went to the tall wooden gate beside the hedge.
The latch sat high enough that Lily should not have been able to reach it.
“She opened that?”
Daniel hesitated.
“It was already open.”
“Why?”
“I must have forgotten.”
Claire stared at him.
Daniel was many things, but he was compulsive about locks.
He checked the front door twice before bed.
He had once driven twenty minutes back from the airport because he could not remember whether he had shut the garage.
“You forgot.”
“Yes.”
Lily lifted her face.
“Daddy didn’t forget.”
Daniel went still.
Claire looked down.
“What happened?”
Lily pointed weakly toward the gate.
“The lady opened it.”
Melina made an irritated sound.
“There.”
Claire looked at her.
“That is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“You’re blaming a four-year-old for being frightened?”
“I’m telling you she isn’t well.”
“Stop saying that.”
“The child needs help.”
“She needed her father.”
Daniel flinched.
That gave Claire no satisfaction.
Lily touched the edge of Claire’s collar.
“She had Mommy’s hair.”
Claire looked at her.
“Who did?”
“The lady.”
“What color?”
Lily touched Claire’s blonde hair.
“Like yours.”
Daniel rubbed both palms over his face.
Claire had seen him do that before difficult conversations with his father, before bad financial news, before admitting he had forgotten an anniversary.
It was not the gesture of a man confronting something supernatural.
It was the gesture of a man trying not to say something.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Daniel lowered his hands.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Claire.”
“You’re terrible at lying when you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
Ethan gave a humorless snort.
Daniel looked at him.
“Stay out of this.”
“You keep saying that.”
Claire’s phone vibrated.
A message appeared from the treatment center.
FOLLOW-UP LAB REVIEW AVAILABLE.
She stared at it for a second and nearly laughed.
Six weeks of needles, medication, fluorescent corridors, bland food, careful optimism, and now an automated message announcing that some invisible part of her body had been measured again.
She locked the screen.
“Lily,” Claire said softly.
“Did the lady talk to you?”
Lily nodded.
“What did she say?”
Daniel stepped closer.
“Claire, don’t.”
Claire ignored him.
Lily’s eyes drifted toward the upstairs windows.
“She said you were sick because Daddy made you sick.”
The words seemed to remove sound from the yard.
Even the distant mower had stopped.
Claire looked at Daniel.
He stared at Lily.
“What?”
Lily hid her face.
Daniel’s expression was genuine.
Claire knew that much.
Whatever he had expected, it had not been that.
Melina recovered first.
“You see?”
“No,” Claire said.
“You see what she’s doing?”
“What is she doing?”
“She is repeating things someone has put into her head.”
“Who?”
Melina opened her mouth.
Daniel said, “Mom.”
Claire caught it.
The interruption.
The warning.
Her pulse accelerated.
“Who?”
Melina looked at her son.
Daniel’s voice sharpened.
“Don’t.”
Claire stepped toward Melina.
“Who put it into her head?”
Melina’s chin lifted.
“You should ask the person who kept visiting your daughter while you were too busy being treated to notice.”
Claire went cold.
“No one visited Lily.”
Ethan’s expression changed.
Daniel looked away.
Claire saw it.
“Daniel.”
He said nothing.
“You told me visitors were restricted because Lily had preschool and you didn’t want her routine disrupted.”
“She did have preschool.”
“Who visited her?”
Daniel stared at the grass.
Lily shifted in Claire’s arms and whispered, “Aunt Sarah.”
Claire stopped breathing.
The name had not been spoken in their house for almost three years.
Ethan swore under his breath.
Melina closed her eyes.
Claire looked from one face to another.
“No.”
Daniel spoke carefully.
“She contacted me after you went into treatment.”
“No.”
“She heard you were sick.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Your mother?”
Melina’s face became unreadable.
Claire laughed once, without humor.
“Of course.”
“I did not call Sarah,” Melina said.
“Then how did she know?”
“I have friends.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one you’re getting while you’re behaving like this.”
Claire’s thumb moved back to her phone.
Daniel said, “She came by twice.”
Claire looked at him.
“Sarah came into my house?”
“Once.”
“You just said twice.”
“The second time I met her somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“A coffee shop.”
May you like
“Why?”
“She wanted to talk about you.”
