Part 7
Lila read it aloud from the temporary phone she had forced Mara to buy from a hospital gift shop display that also sold stuffed bears and phone chargers at criminal prices.
“Defamatory,” Lila said. “That’s rich.”
Mara sat on the edge of the hospital bed in borrowed scrubs because her dress had been taken for evidence. The scrubs were too large and smelled faintly of industrial detergent. “Don’t respond.”
“I wasn’t going to respond.”
“You were making a face.”
“My face is not legally binding.”
Mara wanted coffee, her apartment, a shower, twelve hours of sleep, and a world in which she had never learned how foundations laundered guilt into gala programs. Instead, she received discharge papers and a list of domestic violence resources printed in soft colors that made everything feel both kind and unreal.
A social worker named Ben came in to discuss safety planning. He had a calm beard and shoes with squeaky soles. He asked whether Mara had somewhere to stay that Grant did not know. Mara said no. Lila said yes at the same time.
“My place,” Lila said.
“He knows you,” Mara said.
“He knows of me. That’s different.”
“He has my address book.”
“You have an address book?”
“My contacts.”
“Then we go to my cousin’s place.”
“Which cousin?”
“The one with ferrets.”
“No.”
Ben waited through this with admirable patience.
Mara ended up agreeing to stay at a hotel under Lila’s name for two nights while they figured out the next step. Saying two nights made the future manageable, as though terror could be booked in increments.
Outside the hospital, daylight looked indecently normal. Cars moved through traffic. A woman in a puffer coat argued into earbuds. Someone carried flowers wrapped in plastic. Mara stood near the curb and felt the morning air touch the mark on her cheek.
Lila ordered a rideshare, then canceled it because she decided cars could be tracked, then ordered another under her sister’s account, then realized this sounded insane and looked at Mara helplessly.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Lila said.
Mara watched a bus sigh at the curb. “Me neither.”
They took the bus.
It was crowded and smelled like damp coats, coffee, and somebody’s cinnamon gum. Mara sat by the window with her hood up. Lila stood in front of her, one hand gripping the pole, glaring at anyone whose gaze lingered too long. Halfway to the hotel, an old man offered Mara his seat even though she was already sitting. Lila said thank you with grave sincerity. The old man nodded, satisfied, and went back to looking out the window.
The absurdity of it loosened something in Mara’s chest.
At the hotel, the front desk clerk asked for a card. Lila’s card declined. She swore softly, apologized, tried another, and then stared at the payment terminal as if betrayed by mathematics. Mara reached for her own wallet.
“No,” Lila said.
“Lila.”
“No. I dragged you out of a mansion. I can manage a Hampton Inn.”
“It’s not a Hampton.”
“That’s not the point.”
Mara paid. The clerk pretended not to notice anything. That kindness, too, nearly broke her.
The room was on the seventh floor and faced the back of another building. Lila checked the closet, under the bed, behind the curtain, then stood in the middle of the room looking embarrassed.
“I’ve watched too many shows,” she said.
Mara sat on the bed. “Thank you.”
“For being paranoid?”
“For coming.”
Lila’s face tightened. She took off her blazer and folded it over a chair with unusual care. “I almost didn’t.”
Mara looked at her.
“I saw your call, and I thought—” Lila stopped. “I thought maybe you were going back to him again and wanted me to talk you down. And I was tired. I had a client presentation in the morning. I was mad at you.”
Mara touched the hospital bracelet still around her wrist. “You can be mad.”
“I know. That’s what sucks.”
They sat with that.
Lila worked in insurance compliance, a job she described as professionally suspicious and spiritually dehydrating. She had been Mara’s roommate for three years after college, back when both of them believed adulthood would arrive with matching furniture and a working knowledge of retirement accounts. They had drifted after Mara entered Grant’s world. Not dramatically. There had been missed brunches, delayed replies, a few lies Mara told because the truth sounded pathetic even to herself. Lila had remained nearby in the way old friends sometimes did, visible on the edge of damage, waiting for an invitation to interfere.
Mara looked at the ugly hotel carpet. “I’m sorry I disappeared.”
Lila sat beside her, not touching. “I’m sorry I let you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did a little.”
Mara wanted to argue, but she was too tired to protect Lila from guilt. Maybe guilt had its uses when it did not become the center of the room.
By noon, Mara slept for forty-three minutes and woke because someone knocked.
Lila grabbed the ice bucket like a weapon.
“It’s housekeeping,” a woman called.
Lila looked through the peephole for a full five seconds, then said, “We’re good, thank you,” with the strained cheer of a hostage in a sitcom.
Mara laughed into the pillow until her shoulder hurt.
That afternoon, they retrieved the encrypted drive.
The box of winter scarves sat on the top shelf of Mara’s bedroom closet in a one-bedroom apartment Grant had visited twice and disliked. He had called it transitional, which Mara later understood meant it contained objects he had not chosen. The building smelled of old radiator heat and someone frying onions. Her neighbor across the hall, Mrs. Donnelly, opened her door three inches when Mara arrived with Lila and a locksmith.
“Lose your keys again?” Mrs. Donnelly asked.
Mara had not lost her keys. Grant had them. She had realized that on the bus and gone very quiet until Lila found the locksmith.
May you like
“Something like that,” Mara said.
Mrs. Donnelly’s eyes moved to Mara’s cheek. The three-inch gap became six. “You need anything?”
