Chương 5
“For both of us. If they'll let him come with me.”
“Where?”
“My sister has a townhouse in Georgetown.”
Mia waited.
Daniel gave a tired half-smile.
“That sounded ridiculous, didn't it?”
“Everything you say about houses sounds ridiculous to me.”
Against his will, he laughed.
It disappeared quickly.
“I don't know how to do this.”
“What?”
“Talk to him.”
“Don't start with talking.”
Daniel glanced toward Noah's room.
“What do I start with?”
“Showing up when you say you will.”
Daniel nodded.
Mia added, “And don't make him comfort you.”
His eyes flicked back to hers.
“I wouldn't.”
“You already want him to.”
Daniel's face hardened.
Mia held his gaze.
Then the hardness broke.
He looked away first.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I do.”
That was the first honest conversation they had.
It did not make them friends.
Outside the hospital, the story became uglier.
The gala video spread everywhere.
People slowed down the moment Vivian saw Noah and claimed they could identify guilt in the movement of her left eyelid. A former classmate told a cable show that Vivian had always been “controlling.” Someone who had attended a charity lunch with Daniel two years earlier described him as “emotionally distant.” A woman on social media claimed she had seen Noah at an airport in Toronto.
She had not.
Another claimed Mia was part of a kidnapping conspiracy.
A photograph of Mia leaving the hospital appeared online with her full name.
Her staffing agency called.
The manager, Janice, sounded nervous.
“You cannot speak publicly.”
“I haven't.”
“Not even to correct misinformation.”
“I haven't.”
“We have clients concerned about privacy.”
Mia stopped walking.
“You're worried rich people think I'll tell their business?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to.”
“This is not personal.”
“Janice, a child came out of a wall.”
“I know.”
“And your concern is whether I can still fold towels discreetly.”
“That's unfair.”
“Probably.”
Janice lowered her voice.
“I'm trying to keep you employed.”
Mia leaned against a parking garage pillar.
“Am I employed?”
Silence.
“Your assignment at Vale House is suspended.”
“By who?”
“The agency.”
“Because?”
“Because the property is an active investigation and the family has paused household operations.”
“That sounds different from clients being concerned.”
“I am telling you everything I can.”
Mia closed her eyes.
Rent was due in nine days.
There it was.
Drama could fill a mansion, put a missing child on television, bring police cars to a marble driveway.
Rent still came on the first.
“Okay,” she said.
“Mia.”
“What?”
“Don't do anything impulsive.”
Mia looked at the reporters gathered near the hospital entrance.
“That's becoming everybody's favorite advice.”
She hung up.
Detective Ortiz called her the next afternoon.
The tapping mattered.
Police had found a locked room at the lake house.
Not a dungeon. Not something built for confinement. A small basement laundry room with an exterior door, a utility sink, and a narrow window painted shut years ago.
There were fibers matching Noah's blanket.
A child's fingerprints.
Food packaging.
And scratch marks around the inside knob.
Noah had been kept there first.
“How long?” Mia asked.
“We're still working on it.”
“How did she move him?”
“We're still working on it.”
“Did no one search the house?”
Ortiz paused.
“They did.”
Mia stopped.
“What?”
“The property was searched the night he was reported missing.”
“And?”
“The laundry room door was locked. Mrs. Vale said it contained old electrical equipment and that the key was at the main residence.”
“They accepted that?”
“The first search was focused on locating a child believed to have gone toward the lake. There were dozens of people coming in and out. It's being reviewed.”
Mia sat down on Simone's couch.
That answer made her angrier than a clean lie would have.
“You're saying they missed him.”
“I'm saying we're reconstructing what happened.”
“That's police language.”
“Yes.”
“Was he there?”
“We believe so.”
Mia thought of the hand through the vent.
Of her own tapping sound six days later.
She pressed her fingers against her eyes.
Ortiz said, “Mia.”
“I'm here.”
“You did not create the locked room.”
Mia hated sentences like that.
She knew what they were for.
They never touched the real thing.
“I heard him.”
“You heard a noise.”
“I heard him.”
“You didn't know that.”
“I could've checked.”
“Yes.”
Mia lowered her hands.
Ortiz's answer surprised her.
“Yes,” the detective repeated. “You could have. Other people could have too.”
Mia waited.
“But there is a difference between missing a sign and creating the danger.”
The distinction did not forgive her.
It did, however, give her somewhere to put her feet.
Noah was discharged four days after he was found.
He did not go back to Vale House.
After interviews, reviews, and an emergency family arrangement that Daniel never discussed with Mia in detail, Noah went with Daniel to the Georgetown townhouse belonging to Daniel's sister, Rebecca.
Mia was invited for dinner the second night.
She almost refused.
Then Noah called her himself from Daniel's phone.
“Are you coming?”
“Your dad invited me.”
“I invited you.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“So are you?”
“What are you having?”
“Chicken.”
“That doesn't help.”
“Rebecca burns it.”
A woman's voice in the background said, “I heard that.”
For the first time, Mia heard Noah laugh.
Small.
Real.
“I'll come.”
The townhouse was expensive in a way that tried not to look expensive. Books on built-in shelves. Old rugs. Family photographs that had not been arranged by a designer.
Noah was sitting on the floor when Mia arrived.
Daniel was helping him build something with plastic blocks.
Badly.
“You made the wall wrong,” Noah said.
Daniel stared at it.
“It's a wall.”
“It has a window in the floor.”
“Modern architecture.”
“No.”
“Experimental.”
“No.”
Mia took off her coat.
Noah came to her but did not hug her.
She was relieved.
Progress could look like not needing to touch someone.
May you like
Rebecca Vale was forty-eight, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and capable of communicating disapproval by moving one eyebrow.
She hugged Mia.
