Chương 6
“What are you doing?”
“Making coffee.”
“We’re talking.”
“I’m done.”
“That’s shutting down.”
Rachel set the mug on the counter harder than necessary.
“Our eight-year-old asked me yesterday if her grandmother wanted her dead.”
David’s face changed.
Rachel continued.
“I told her no.”
“Good.”
“Was I right?”
He had no answer.
Rachel turned on the coffee maker.
The machine made its dull grinding noise.
Neither of them spoke over it.
The investigation did not move the way television had taught Rachel investigations moved.
No one appeared at the house with revelations.
No scientist telephoned before dinner.
No detective assembled them in a room and explained motive.
Instead there were calls.
Forms.
Requests to repeat details.
A victim advocate contacted them.
A child interviewer scheduled a formal forensic interview with Lucas so he would not have to keep telling the story to different adults.
Rachel hated the phrase forensic interview almost as much as she appreciated the reasoning behind it.
Lucas hated the entire idea.
“I already told them.”
“I know.”
“Why do I have to say it again?”
“Because they want to make sure they get it right.”
“I got it right the first time.”
“I know.”
“What if I say something different?”
Rachel paused.
“What do you mean?”
“What if I forget which hand she used or something?”
“That’s okay.”
“Then they’ll think I lied.”
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
He was right.
Rachel sat on the edge of his bed.
Lucas had started sleeping with the hall light on again, something he had not done since he was six.
He was building a structure from magnetic tiles while they talked.
He placed a blue square on top of a yellow triangle.
It slid off.
He tried again.
“Tell them what you remember,” Rachel said. “If you don’t remember something, say you don’t.”
He did not look at her.
“Dad thinks I lied.”
“He doesn’t.”
“Yes, he does.”
“No, he—”
“He did that face.”
“What face?”
“The face he does when he doesn’t believe something but doesn’t want to say it.”
Rachel nearly smiled despite herself.
David did have that face.
A tightness at one corner of his mouth. A slight narrowing of his left eye.
Lucas knew his father too.
“He believes you,” she said.
Lucas tried the tile again.
“Then why doesn’t he say Grandma did it?”
Rachel had no answer simple enough for a ten-year-old.
“Because grown-ups can know something happened and still have trouble accepting what it means.”
Lucas finally looked at her.
“That sounds dumb.”
“It is.”
He accepted this more easily than reassurance.
The tile stayed in place.
Eleanor sent flowers on Monday.
White roses.
No card.
Rachel knew they were from Eleanor because the florist had delivered arrangements from the same shop every Thanksgiving for years.
David put them in the garage.
Rachel found them there several hours later, still wrapped in paper.
“What are these?”
He looked embarrassed.
“Flowers.”
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t know what to do with them.”
“So you put them next to the recycling?”
“Yes.”
Rachel touched one white petal.
The arrangement probably cost more than their weekly grocery bill.
“Throw them out.”
David hesitated.
Then he carried them to the trash.
That small act hurt him.
Rachel could tell.
She did not thank him.
Three days later, Eleanor’s lawyer contacted David.
Not Rachel.
David told her immediately.
That mattered.
They were in the laundry room. Rachel was folding Sophie’s pale pink birthday dress, which had come back from the hospital in a plastic bag.
She had washed it twice.
There was still a faint brownish mark near the waist where hospital adhesive had touched the fabric.
“He says she wants to resolve this privately.”
Rachel stopped folding.
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t explain.”
“What did you say?”
“That he needed to speak to our lawyer.”
Rachel looked up.
“Our lawyer?”
“I called one.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
She stared at him.
David rubbed the back of his neck.
“You said we needed to stop acting like this was a confusing little mystery.”
Rachel looked down at the dress.
“Yes.”
“So I called someone.”
The anger she had been preparing disappeared so quickly that she felt almost foolish.
“What kind of lawyer?”
“Family and victim representation. She was recommended by the hospital advocate.”
Rachel placed the dress on the dryer.
“Thank you.”
David nodded.
It was the first time in days they had done something that felt like standing on the same side.
Then his phone rang.
Eleanor.
He declined the call.
It rang again.
He declined it.
The third time he shut the phone off.
Rachel said, “You can answer if you want.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“I’m not.”
He put the phone on a shelf.
“I don’t know what I’d say.”
Rachel folded the dress again.
This time she put it in the donation box.
Sophie never asked for it.
The first major break in the case came not from the jar but from a grocery receipt.
It arrived through Eleanor’s attorney in response to a request for records related to the dinner.
Rachel did not understand why the receipt mattered until their attorney, Dana Cho, placed a copy on the conference table.
Dana was forty-two, unsentimental, and allergic to dramatic predictions.
“This shows Mrs. Miller purchased the almond cream that afternoon.”
David stared at the receipt.
Among wine, sparkling water, imported olives, and a ridiculous amount of cheese was a line for almond cream.
Timestamp: 3:18 p.m.
Rachel had picked up the birthday cake at 3:42.
David said, “She could have bought it for something else.”
Dana looked at him.
“Yes.”
Rachel turned.
“David.”
“I’m asking.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not defending her.”
Dana held up one hand.
“It is reasonable to test every interpretation. That’s what everyone else will do too.”
Rachel sat back.
May you like
Dana continued.
“The receipt does not establish what she did with it. Lucas’s account is more important for that. The receipt establishes access and timing.”
