Chương 2
When I said Caleb’s name, my mouth went dry.
The sergeant wrote it down.
“Could she have access to your email?”
“No.”
“Your husband’s?”
“No.”
“Shared family calendar?”
“We don’t have one with her.”
“Location sharing?”
“No.”
Daniel glanced at me.
I saw it immediately.
“What?”
He lowered his phone.
“Your dad’s old account.”
I stared at him.
“What about it?”
“You never changed the password on the airline miles account.”
“That doesn’t show my trips.”
“It might if you used the same email.”
“I didn’t book through that account.”
“I know, but—”
He stopped.
The sergeant looked between us.
“We can sort through possibilities later.”
A paramedic crouched beside me and asked if she could examine Lily.
I said yes, then refused to hand her over.
The paramedic did not argue.
She checked Lily while I held her, running careful fingers along her arms and shoulders and watching how she moved her head.
Lily hiccupped through her crying and grabbed the paramedic’s badge.
“That’s a good sign,” the woman said.
I nearly laughed.
Instead a sound came out of me that was half laugh and half sob.
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck.
“You’re okay, bug,” he murmured.
Lily stared at him with wet eyelashes and a trembling lower lip.
I kissed the top of her head.
The sergeant stepped away to speak with another officer.
Across the concourse, passengers had begun moving again.
Some stared openly.
One man held his phone at chest height, and I could not tell whether he was recording us or reading a text.
A woman in a red coat whispered to her teenage son.
An airport employee uprighted the fallen suitcase and asked three times whether it belonged to anyone.
The ordinary world had resumed around the worst five minutes of my life.
Patricia sat against a wall with her cuffed hands in front of her now.
She had stopped shouting.
That scared me more.
Her hair had fallen loose from the clip she usually wore, and there was a scrape along one cheek.
She looked smaller sitting down.
Older.
Almost embarrassed.
For one dangerous second, pity moved through me out of habit.
Patricia had been in my life for eighteen years.
She had packed lunches when my father was working double shifts.
She had driven Caleb to soccer.
She had stood beside me at my wedding in a navy dress she complained made her look like a funeral director.
She had also spent the last year turning grief into ownership.
I looked away before memory could soften what had just happened.
Daniel noticed.
“Don’t do that,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“Start explaining her to yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
I wanted to tell him he was being unfair.
Instead I adjusted Lily’s sock because it had come halfway off her foot.
The paramedic asked whether Lily had vomited or lost consciousness.
“No.”
“Any unusual sleepiness?”
“She was tired before this.”
“That makes it harder to judge.”
I nodded.
Every normal thing suddenly sounded suspicious.
Lily rubbed her face against me.
The sergeant returned.
“We’re going to need statements from both of you.”
“Our flight is boarding,” Daniel said.
The sergeant looked toward the gate.
“You won’t be on it.”
Daniel shut his eyes briefly.
I should have cared about the tickets.
We had spent months planning the trip.
Daniel’s mother was meeting Lily for the first time in Seattle after recovering from surgery, and changing our flights on short notice would cost money we did not particularly have.
But the idea of boarding any airplane while Patricia remained somewhere inside the airport made my skin crawl.
“That’s fine,” I said.
Daniel looked at me, then nodded.
The sergeant continued.
“We’re also going to ask you not to leave the airport until we understand how she got through the checkpoint and whether anyone assisted her.”
“Assisted her?”
My voice rose.
“Someone helped her get in here?”
“We don’t know.”
“But that’s possible?”
“Right now, a lot of things are possible.”
Behind him, another officer was speaking into a radio.
I heard the words security footage and breach point.
Patricia lifted her head.
Her eyes found mine immediately.
She did not look sorry.
She looked betrayed.
That was the expression that chilled me most.
She mouthed something.
At first I could not understand it.
Then she did it again.
Caleb told me.
I stopped breathing.
Daniel saw my face.
“What did she say?”
I did not answer.
Patricia gave the smallest nod, as if confirming a private fact between us.
“Emily?”
Daniel stepped closer.
I looked at my husband, then at the sergeant.
“My brother.”
“What about him?”
I forced the words out.
“She says my brother told her.”
The sergeant turned toward Patricia.
Daniel’s face changed in a way I had seen only once before, the night my father died, when a doctor closed the curtain around his hospital bed and Daniel understood what I could not yet accept.
“No,” he said.
It was not disagreement.
It was hope.
My phone began vibrating inside the diaper bag on the floor.
Daniel picked up the bag and found it beneath Lily’s spare clothes.
The screen showed Caleb’s name.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then the call stopped.
A message appeared.
Em, please call me before you talk to the police.
Daniel read the message over my shoulder and swore under his breath.
The police sergeant held out one hand.
“Don’t call him yet.”
I looked at the screen again.
Another message appeared before I could lock it.
I didn’t know what she was going to do.
My thumb hovered over Caleb’s name.
Daniel took the phone gently from me.
“You’re not talking to him without somebody listening.”
“He’s my brother.”
“That’s exactly why.”
The sentence hurt because it was true.
May you like
A few feet away, Lily had finally stopped crying and was gnawing on the edge of my sweatshirt zipper with the furious concentration she usually reserved for silicone toys.
I held her closer and stared at Caleb’s messages.
