Chương 4
CHILD DISCOVERED DURING MEMORIAL GALA.
Then:
WHO KNEW NOAH VALE WAS ALIVE?
Mia turned off notifications.
At three-thirty in the morning, she sat alone in a hospital cafeteria drinking coffee that tasted like burnt cardboard.
Her sister Simone called.
Mia almost did not answer.
“You alive?” Simone said.
“Technically.”
“That's not funny.”
“I know.”
“There's a video.”
Mia closed her eyes.
“Of course there is.”
“You're in it.”
“Of course I am.”
“Mia.”
“What?”
“You are holding that baby like somebody is trying to take him from you.”
Mia stared at the vending machine across the room.
“They were.”
“Who?”
“I don't know anymore.”
Simone went quiet.
Then, softly, “Come stay with me tonight.”
“I can't leave yet.”
“You work for these people. You don't belong to them.”
“I know.”
“You say that like you don't.”
Mia rubbed at the place on her wrist where Noah had grabbed her.
The skin was red beneath the edge of her watch.
“I promised him.”
“That you'd stay all night?”
“No.”
“What'd you promise?”
“That she wouldn't close the door.”
Simone sighed.
“You always make very specific promises and then somehow turn them into your whole life.”
Mia almost laughed.
It came out wrong.
For the first time since the dumbwaiter opened, she cried.
Only for a minute.
She wiped her face with a napkin, missed the trash can when she threw it away, picked the napkin off the floor, and went upstairs.
By morning, Vivian Vale was in custody.
Mia learned this from Detective Ortiz, not from the news.
Police searching the mansion had found the brass key to the dumbwaiter lock in Vivian's dressing room inside a small lacquer box with jewelry receipts. They had also found photographs on her phone of the old service corridor taken twelve days earlier and a text exchange with a handyman.
Can this door lock from the hall only?
Yes, but I wouldn't recommend using the lift. Pulley is unstable.
I don't need the lift. Just the compartment.
The handyman had installed the modern lock nine days before Noah disappeared.
Vivian had told him the dumbwaiter needed securing before gala staff came through the house.
Reasonable, by itself.
Nothing was reasonable by itself anymore.
There was more.
A search team was going back to the lake property.
Detectives had requested records from the hospital where Noah had been treated before disappearing.
They were also trying to reconstruct eleven days of movements from cameras, vehicle data, staff schedules, key entries, purchases, and phone records.
Ortiz did not tell Mia details she did not need to know.
Mia liked her slightly more for that.
“What happens to Noah?” Mia asked.
“That isn't my decision.”
“Can Daniel take him home?”
“Would you want to go back to that house today?”
Mia had no answer.
Neither, apparently, did anyone else.
Noah stayed in the hospital for two nights.
The doctors described him to Mia only in broad terms because she was not family: dehydrated, underfed, exhausted, physically stable. More evaluations would follow. He had been given water and some food while hidden, enough to keep him functioning. The exact timeline was still unclear.
The first time Mia tried to leave, Noah panicked.
Not loudly.
He saw her put on her coat and stopped talking.
Mia noticed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
She lifted her purse.
Noah's breathing shortened.
Mia put the purse down.
“You don't want me to go.”
He stared at the television.
A cartoon dog was driving a red truck.
“No.”
Mia sat again.
“You know I can't stay here forever.”
No response.
“But I'm not disappearing.”
“You don't know.”
“I can tell you before I leave.”
“You could lie.”
“Yes.”
That surprised him enough to make him look at her.
Mia leaned back.
“Anybody can lie. I'm not going to tell you they can't.”
Noah considered this.
“Vivian lied.”
“Yes.”
“Dad believed her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I didn't know her.”
“What if she told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That I was dead.”
Mia thought about the memorial portrait. The white lilies. The guests drinking champagne beneath a dead child's name.
“I probably would've believed you were missing,” she said. “A lot of people did.”
“So everybody was stupid?”
“No.”
“Dad was.”
Mia almost corrected him.
She didn't.
“Maybe.”
Noah frowned at the television.
The dog crashed the truck into a haystack and laughed.
Noah did not.
On the third morning, Daniel brought Mia coffee.
He had learned how she took it from Mr. Dorsey.
Two sugars. Too much cream.
Mia accepted the cup.
Daniel stood beside the vending machines with his own untouched coffee.
“I owe you everything,” he said.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“You don't.”
“I don't understand.”
“Don't make me part of some redemption story you can pay off.”
His face tightened.
“That isn't what I meant.”
“Good.”
“I meant my son is alive because you opened that door.”
“Your son is alive because he put his hand through it.”
Daniel looked down at his coffee.
Mia regretted the sharpness almost immediately.
Not enough to take it back.
He nodded.
“Fair.”
For a moment they listened to an ice machine empty cubes into itself.
Daniel said, “I heard you tried to report a noise last week.”
“I didn't report it.”
“They said you heard something.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it was him?”
Mia stared into her cup.
“I don't know.”
Daniel's jaw moved.
“If you had—”
He stopped.
Mia looked at him.
“Finish that sentence.”
Daniel pressed his lips together.
“If you'd checked—”
“Don't.”
He looked at her.
“You get to blame me later if you want. Right now, don't.”
“I wasn't blaming you.”
“You were about to.”
Daniel turned away.
For several seconds Mia could see him wrestling with the version of himself who had spent a lifetime finishing whatever sentence he wanted.
Then he said, “You're right.”
She did not thank him.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
May you like
“I'm looking for somewhere else to stay.”
“For Noah?”
