Chương 2
Beyond it, a fluorescent light flickered over another corridor.
At the far end, a man in dark medical scrubs disappeared around a corner.
“Mercer!”
He ran.
I followed him through a storage room lined with dusty shelves and into the old wine cellar.
He knocked over a wooden rack behind him.
Bottles crashed across the floor.
I jumped the wreckage and slipped on spilled wine, catching myself against the wall.
Mercer reached the cellar stairs first.
Henry appeared through the kitchen entrance above and blocked him.
Mercer stopped.
For one ridiculous second, the three of us simply stared at each other.
Then Mercer reached inside his jacket.
I lunged.
He pulled out a phone, not a weapon, but I drove him into the wall before I understood that.
The phone skidded under a cabinet.
“Where is Grace?”
“I can explain.”
“Everyone keeps saying that instead of answering me.”
“She’s safe.”
I shoved him harder.
“Where?”
“Daniel.”
My mother’s voice came from the stairs.
Mercer looked past me at her.
There it was again.
That glance.
Permission.
Fear.
Something arranged between them.
I released his collar and stepped back.
“Call Grace.”
Mercer rubbed his throat.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t have her phone.”
My mother said, “Enough.”
I turned toward her.
“You told me her doctor took it.”
She said nothing.
I looked at Mercer.
“Did you?”
His face changed.
“No.”
The cellar seemed suddenly very quiet.
Even Henry looked at my mother.
I pulled Grace’s phone number up on my screen and called it.
For two seconds there was nothing.
Then a ringtone began playing somewhere in the cellar.
My mother went pale.
I followed the sound.
It came from behind a locked cabinet built beneath the stairs.
Henry handed me the brass key without being asked.
It fit.
Inside were three phones.
One belonged to Grace.
The second was an old prepaid device.
The third was mine.
Or rather, it was an exact copy of the model I carried, fitted with a case identical to mine.
I picked it up.
There were photographs of Grace on the screen.
In one, she sat on the edge of the bolted hospital bed, visibly pregnant, staring at whoever held the camera.
In another, she was asleep.
Then I found a message thread.
The sender was saved under my name.
I opened it.
Grace had been receiving messages from “me” for weeks.
Stop calling so much.
I need space.
The pregnancy has complicated everything.
Maybe we rushed into this.
Her replies began angry.
Then confused.
Then frightened.
By the final week, they had become pleading.
Please just talk to me on video.
Daniel, your mother says you don’t want me here anymore.
I don’t believe her.
Please tell me yourself.
The last message had been sent three days earlier.
I’m not leaving without hearing it from you.
I looked at my mother.
She did not deny it.
Mercer sat heavily on a wooden crate.
Henry turned his face away.
My thumb moved farther up the false conversation until I found something worse.
A photograph had been sent from the fake phone.
It showed me outside a hotel in Milwaukee beside a woman I recognized as the attorney representing one of the families involved in the conflict.
The angle made her hand on my arm look intimate.
Underneath it, someone pretending to be me had written six words.
I have already moved on, Grace.
My stomach turned.
“You made her believe this?”
My mother’s voice remained controlled.
“I tried to make her understand reality.”
“What reality?”
“That she was destroying your judgment.”
I laughed once, but there was nothing humorous in it.
“So you imprisoned her.”
“She refused to leave.”
“She lives here.”
“This is my house.”
“She is my wife.”
“And you are my son.”
My mother said it as if that settled ownership.
Mercer stood.
“We need to stop this.”
I turned on him.
He lifted both hands.
“Not for her sake.”
He nodded toward my mother.
“For Grace’s.”
The anger inside me changed shape.
“What happened?”
Mercer hesitated.
My mother said, “Don’t.”
He ignored her.
“She started having contractions yesterday afternoon.”
My hand went numb around the phone.
“How far apart?”
“Initially irregular.”
“Where is she?”
“I wanted her transferred to a hospital.”
My mother interrupted.
“And I refused because the moment she entered a hospital, she would create a scandal before we understood what she intended to do.”
Mercer looked sick.
“She is thirty-nine weeks pregnant, Evelyn.”
“You accepted the arrangement.”
“I accepted monitoring her here because you told me she was emotionally unstable and refusing appropriate care.”
“You were paid.”
“Yes.”
His voice cracked.
“And I was a coward.”
I stepped toward him.
“Where did you move her?”
Mercer looked at my mother again.
This time he did not wait for permission.
“The lake house.”
I was already moving.
My mother caught my sleeve as I passed.
“Daniel, listen to me.”
I pulled free.
“She may not want to see you.”
That stopped me.
Not because I believed her.
Because after weeks of forged messages, imprisonment, and whatever else had happened inside this house, I had no idea what Grace believed anymore.
My mother saw the hesitation and pressed it.
“She thinks you abandoned her.”
I looked at the fake phone in my hand.
“No.”
My voice sounded unfamiliar.
“You made her think I abandoned her.”
I started up the cellar stairs.
Henry followed.
Mercer came after us.
My mother remained below.
At the kitchen door, I turned back.
“If Grace or our baby is hurt, there is nowhere in this family big enough to hide what you did.”
For once, Evelyn Hale had no answer.
Outside, rain streaked across the courtyard lights, and my car sat exactly where I had left it less than an hour earlier.
Henry reached for the passenger door.
“You’re staying here.”
“Mr. Daniel—”
“Call the police from a line outside the estate network.”
May you like
His expression tightened.
“Your mother has relationships with people in the county.”
