Chương 8
The number should have made the discovery smaller than something vague like dozens, but it did the opposite.
Three meant faces existed somewhere.
Three meant birthdays, bad habits, favorite coffee, mothers who might still wonder why their daughters changed.
“Are they alive?” I asked.
Ortiz did not answer quickly enough.
“We don’t know.”
My fingers curled into the blanket.
“What are the names?”
“I’m not going to give them to you until we know whether those names belong to real people.”
“They’re on my husband’s computer.”
“Yes.”
“That feels real.”
“It feels important.”
I looked at her.
She corrected herself.
“It is important.”
Dr. Feld checked the monitor again.
Another contraction began, low and tight.
I breathed through it without being told.
Ortiz waited.
When it passed, I said, “Were they pregnant?”
“We don’t know.”
“Were they his girlfriends?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did Marlene know them?”
“We don’t know.”
The answers became unbearable.
I turned toward the wall.
A cheap framed print hung there, blue flowers in a white vase.
One corner of the frame was crooked.
I stared at it because crooked things were manageable.
“You should find out.”
“We will.”
“Tonight.”
“We’re working on it now.”
“Before he has time.”
“He’s not going home.”
I turned back.
“What does that mean?”
“It means neither Daniel nor Marlene is being released back into that house tonight.”
That was the closest thing to safety anyone had promised me.
I let my head sink into the pillow.
The relief lasted maybe five seconds.
Then another thought replaced it.
“My house.”
Ortiz waited.
“That’s my house too.”
“Is your name on the deed?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But my things are there.”
“We can arrange access later.”
“My purse.”
“We can retrieve essentials.”
“My ID.”
“We can get that.”
“My wedding ring is in the bathroom drawer.”
The words left my mouth before I understood why I had said them.
Ortiz watched me.
I looked at my bare left hand.
Marlene had made me remove the ring after my fingers swelled.
She said the sight of it annoyed her because I had not earned Daniel’s patience.
For months, I had thought about that ring whenever I imagined leaving.
Not because I wanted the marriage.
Because my grandmother’s diamond sat in the center.
Daniel had reset it when we got engaged.
It was mine before he was.
“I want that back,” I said.
“We’ll document it.”
“Not tonight.”
“No.”
I nodded.
The world had become lists.
Phone.
ID.
Ring.
Evidence.
Names.
Baby.
The simplicity of the nouns kept me from falling apart.
Marcus finished the second copy and showed Ortiz something on his screen.
They spoke in low voices.
Then he returned my phone in a clear evidence-style sleeve with an opening at the top.
“You can use it,” he said.
“Should I?”
“For now, I’d keep it offline unless Detective Ortiz tells you otherwise.”
I held it.
The battery was at forty-one percent.
I had never loved a number so much.
Ortiz asked whether I wanted to contact anyone.
The question exposed a blank space I had avoided since the ambulance.
My mother lived four states away.
My older sister, Claire, lived forty minutes from the hospital.
For seven months, neither had seen me.
Daniel had sent messages from my original phone at first.
Short ones.
Pregnancy is rough.
Need quiet.
Not up for visitors.
He had answered calls sometimes with excuses that sounded exactly like things I might say.
Later, the contact slowed.
I had imagined Claire getting angry.
Then worried.
Then perhaps offended.
Eventually tired.
I knew my sister.
She could hold a grudge over a canceled brunch for a month.
She could also drive through a snowstorm because someone sounded sad on the phone.
I had no idea what version of her I was about to meet.
“My sister.”
Ortiz handed me her own phone because mine was being kept offline.
“Do you know the number?”
I did.
Claire answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
I could not speak.
“Hello?”
Her voice sounded sharper than I remembered.
“Claire.”
Silence.
Then, “Rachel?”
My throat closed.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Longer.
“What number is this?”
“A detective’s.”
“What?”
“I’m at St. Vincent.”
“What happened?”
There was movement on her end.
A door closing.
Keys.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Is the baby okay?”
“They’re monitoring us.”
“Where is Daniel?”
The question came so fast I looked at Ortiz.
“With police.”
Claire stopped moving.
“What do you mean with police?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing useful came.
Seven months could not fit into a phone call.
“He kept me in the attic.”
Claire made a small sound.
Not disbelief exactly.
More like a person hearing a sentence in a language she almost understood.
“What?”
“Daniel and Marlene.”
“No.”
The word hit hard.
I closed my eyes.
“I know.”
“No, I mean, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying they locked me upstairs.”
“You told me you didn’t want anyone coming over.”
“I didn’t.”
“You texted me that.”
“He had my phone.”
The line went quiet again.
I could hear her breathing.
Then she said, “I’m coming.”
“Okay.”
“Right now.”
“Okay.”
“Rachel.”
“Yeah?”
She started to say something and stopped.
I waited.
“You better actually be there.”
It was such a Claire sentence that I almost smiled.
“I’m here.”
She hung up.
Ortiz took her phone back.
“She sounds angry.”
“She is.”
“At you?”
“Probably.”
“People can be angry and scared at the same time.”
“I know.”
I did not want that explained.
I already knew.
Claire arrived thirty-five minutes later wearing pajama pants under a long wool coat and one sneaker untied.
She came through the curtain too fast, stopped when she saw me, and covered her mouth.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then she looked at the tube site, the bruising on my arms, my stomach, my face.
May you like
Her expression changed with every detail.
I had imagined this reunion a hundred times upstairs.
