Chương 6
She gave him a tired half smile. “Normal conversation. I’m trying it.”
He leaned back in the chair.
“Did Mom ever dislike Nora?” he asked.
Anna lowered the cup.
“What kind of question is that?”
“The kind I should’ve asked while Nora was alive.”
“Mom disliked not being needed. Nora didn’t need her.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the closest one I have.”
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
Anna sat in the second chair. “Mom respected Nora.”
“She respected opposition when she could defeat it.”
“Nora usually defeated her.”
“Exactly.”
They sat quietly. A cleaning cart squeaked in the hall. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a child laughed at something on television. The sound was brief and oddly ordinary.
Anna said, “You should tell me about Seattle.”
“Not now.”
“This may be about Seattle.”
“I don’t even have an offer.”
“Mom doesn’t need a fact. She needs a possibility she can prepare to control.”
Daniel looked at Emily again.
“Did you give her any information?”
“No.”
“Did Laura call you?”
“No.”
“Mercer?”
“I’d never heard his name before Mom asked about him.”
“You said you knew the name.”
“I recognized it. That’s different.”
His mother would have approved of the correction.
Daniel’s phone displayed fourteen notifications. Work calls. A message from his neighbor asking whether everything was all right. Three messages from Margaret.
He opened the first.
Emily’s condition?
The second arrived eight minutes later.
Please do not speak to Anna until we have clarified the facts.
The third said:
Charles did not do this.
Daniel showed the messages to Officer Alvarez when she returned. The officer photographed the screen.
“Did you ask her how she knows?” Alvarez said.
“No.”
“Don’t, for now.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather hear her explanation before she knows which gaps we’re looking at.”
“What gaps?”
Alvarez folded her notebook closed. “Mr. Mercer’s vehicle data places him leaving your driveway at five sixteen and returning at five forty. The system update began at five eleven and completed at five thirty-four.”
“I found Emily before that.”
“Your 911 call was logged at five thirty-seven.”
Daniel pictured the kitchen again. The open freezer. Margaret in the doorway. The SUV entering the drive.
“I may have been wrong by a few minutes.”
“That’s normal.”
“Then he could have locked her in and left.”
“He could have.”
“And returned after my mother called him.”
“He says your mother texted him at five thirty-three, asking him to return immediately.”
“That was before my 911 call.”
“Yes.”
Daniel stared at her.
“How did she know something was wrong?”
“That is one of the gaps.”
The hospital discharged Emily shortly before midnight. Daniel refused to return to the house while Margaret and Laura were there. Anna offered her apartment, but it had one bedroom, an unreliable elevator, and a downstairs neighbor who played electric guitar at night. They went instead to a hotel ten minutes from the hospital.
At the front desk, the clerk asked whether they wanted one king bed or two queens.
“Two queens,” Daniel said.
Emily, half asleep in his arms, murmured, “We’re not queens.”
The clerk smiled without knowing whether she should.
Anna bought toothbrushes, water, crackers, and a stuffed rabbit from the small hotel shop. The rabbit cost twenty-eight dollars and had one ear longer than the other.
“It’s ugly,” Anna said, handing it to Emily. “So nobody else wanted it.”
“I want it,” Emily said.
“That was my theory.”
In the room, Daniel checked the closet, bathroom, windows, and connecting door. Then he checked them again.
Anna watched from the edge of one bed.
“You’re doing the thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you pretend a checklist is the same as control.”
He tested the connecting-door lock once more. “You can go home.”
“I’m staying.”
“There’s no reason.”
“That has never stopped any Hayes woman.”
Emily climbed under the covers with the rabbit. She wore a hotel robe because her pajamas were in an evidence bag. The sleeves covered her hands.
“Dad?”
He sat beside her.
“Did Grandma know it was a game?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Grandma in trouble?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Emily’s hazel eyes stayed on his face. “The police lady asked if I was alone with you.”
Daniel looked toward Anna.
She had gone very still.
“When did she ask that?” he said.
“In the hospital. When you got coffee.”
Officer Alvarez had not asked it. A social worker had spoken to Emily while Daniel signed discharge papers. He had been told the questions were routine.
“Sometimes adults ask a lot of questions to make sure children are safe,” he said.
“Am I safe?”
He placed his hand over the hotel blanket.
“Yes.”
Again too quickly, but this time he did not correct himself.
Emily looked down at the stuffed rabbit. “The person had shiny fingers.”
“What does that mean?”
“Something shiny.”
“A ring?”
“Maybe.”
Daniel’s silver wedding ring caught the light from the bedside lamp.
Emily looked at it.
He closed his hand.
“Was it like mine?”
“I don’t know.”
Anna stood. “That’s enough for tonight.”
Daniel nodded.
Emily lay down. He left the lamp on low. She fell asleep with the rabbit under her chin and one hand wrapped around his thumb.
Anna sat by the window, looking down at traffic on the wet road.
After a while she said, “Mom wears three rings.”
“Mercer had one.”
“You noticed?”
“I noticed everything about him except whether he locked my daughter in a freezer.”
“Laura doesn’t wear jewelry.”
“She had access.”
“So did Mom.”
Daniel looked toward Emily.
Anna lowered her voice further. “You need to be prepared for this to be someone you know.”
“They’re all people I know.”
“I mean someone you love.”
May you like
The statement sat between them.
Daniel wanted to reject the word love as too broad to be useful. He loved his mother. He also avoided being alone with her when he was uncertain of his decisions. He loved Anna and ignored half her calls. He loved Nora and had failed, during the last ordinary morning of her life, to kiss her goodbye because they were arguing about a leaking gutter.
