Chương 7
He lowered his voice.
“She says Dennis came to Marissa’s apartment Sunday night.”
I felt pressure behind my ribs.
“She was there?”
“Sophie says her mother and father argued.”
“What about?”
“She doesn’t know.”
Bell swallowed.
“She says her mother told Dennis to leave.”
Sophie looked up.
“He pushed her.”
Bell stopped.
The room became silent.
Sophie’s eyes moved from him to me.
“She fell by the table,” she said.
I sat beside her.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“But I told the lady.”
“That was okay.”
“She made a bad sound.”
I could hear my own pulse.
Sophie twisted the rabbit’s ear.
“Daddy put Mommy on the couch.”
The nurse had stopped touching the monitor.
“He said she was sleeping.”
Sophie’s voice became smaller.
“Then he took Mommy’s phone.”
Bell looked at me.
That detail changed the shape of everything.
Dennis had not arrived after Marissa mysteriously became unconscious.
He had been there when it happened.
Sophie continued before anyone interrupted her.
“He told me we had to go because Mommy was sick.”
Her lips trembled.
“I wanted my shoes.”
“You had shoes,” I said softly.
“My red ones.”
I nodded as though that distinction mattered, because to a five-year-old it did.
“He said no.”
She rubbed her eyes.
“Then he carried me to the car.”
Bell stepped closer.
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to tell us anything else right now.”
Sophie ignored him.
“When we got to Daddy’s house, the shiny lady yelled.”
My stomach tightened.
“She said he was stupid.”
Sophie looked at me.
“She said Mommy was supposed to sign first.”
Bell and I exchanged a glance.
“Sign what?” he asked before catching himself.
Sophie shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
The nurse intervened then and told everyone Sophie needed rest.
Bell apologized.
I stayed beside the bed until her breathing slowed.
Outside the room, Park was waiting in the hallway.
She must have driven from the house while Sophie was being interviewed.
Her hair had come loose near one temple.
For the first time all day, she looked tired.
“We need to talk somewhere private,” she said.
Bell found an unused consultation room.
Park shut the door.
“Salem police searched Marissa’s apartment this afternoon.”
My mouth went dry.
“They found evidence consistent with Sophie’s account of a struggle.”
“Is Marissa conscious enough to speak?”
“Yes.”
“What does she say?”
Park placed a small notebook on the table but did not open it.
“She says Dennis came to her apartment Sunday after more than a year of minimal contact.”
“Why?”
“He told her he wanted to discuss Sophie’s future.”
“What future?”
“He claimed he and Trisha were relocating overseas.”
I stared at her.
“Were they?”
“No evidence of that.”
“Then why say it?”
“According to Marissa, Dennis brought paperwork.”
The word sign returned immediately.
“What paperwork?”
“Consent forms allowing him to obtain a passport for Sophie.”
I stood so fast the chair legs scraped the floor.
“He was trying to take her out of the country.”
“Marissa says she refused.”
“And then he pushed her.”
“She says Dennis grabbed her phone when she threatened to call police.”
“What happened after that?”
“Her memory is incomplete.”
“Because she was unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“How long was she there before someone found her?”
“Nearly thirty hours.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Who found her?”
“A neighbor who became concerned because Marissa missed work and Sophie hadn’t been seen.”
I turned toward the wall.
My son had left one woman unconscious in an apartment and another child locked in an attic.
Then he had flown to Hawaii.
Park let the silence sit.
When I faced her again, she said, “We also found a document in Marissa’s apartment that appears to explain the six-thousand-dollar debt to Caleb Nunes.”
I waited.
“Dennis paid Nunes a deposit.”
“For the boat?”
“For transportation.”
“To Canada?”
Park shook her head.
“Not Canada.”
I stared at her.
“The messages used Canada as a cover.”
“A cover for what?”
She opened the notebook.
“Nunes has access to a vessel that makes private runs between Oregon and Washington.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“No.”
Park’s eyes held mine.
“But the document does.”
She slid a photocopy across the table.
It was a printed itinerary with handwritten notes beside three dates.
The final destination was not another country.
It was a marina outside Seattle.
Beside it, in Dennis’s handwriting, were four words.
TRANSFER SOPHIE TO M. COLE.
I looked up.
“That makes no sense.”
Park turned the page over.
On the back was another handwritten line.
It contained a name I recognized.
Not Marissa.
Not Trisha.
Margaret Stanley.
My dead wife.
I stared at the name until the letters stopped looking like letters.
“What does my wife have to do with this?”
Park took the photocopy back and studied the handwriting.
“We don’t know yet.”
“You brought me in here because you have my dead wife’s name written on the back of a transportation itinerary.”
“Yes.”
“That is not nothing.”
“No.”
Bell sat across from us, silent.
I turned to him.
“Did Marissa mention Margaret?”
“Not to me.”
“Did Sophie?”
“No.”
I looked back at Park.
“Dennis was thirty-six when Margaret died.”
“I know.”
“He was already married to Trisha.”
“I know.”
“Marissa wasn’t in his life anymore.”
“Apparently that part may not be as simple as you believed.”
I hated the sentence because it came too close to what I had been thinking all day.
There were apparently entire rooms in Dennis’s life I had never been invited into.
I had confused exclusion with simplicity.
“What exactly is written there?”
Park slid the copy toward me again.
The line beneath Margaret’s name contained a date.
October 18, seven years earlier.
Three days before my wife died.
Under the date was a number.
“Do you recognize that?”
I leaned closer.
The number began with 503.
For several seconds, nothing came.
Then something small shifted in my memory.
May you like
A kitchen table.
Margaret standing with one hand on the back of a chair.
