Chương 5
“You never have to try.”
“Victor hurt the boy to force movement. Yours, mine, maybe Celia’s. We need to assume every reaction is anticipated.”
“He couldn’t know I’d call you.”
“He knew you remembered the number.”
“He thinks you’re dead.”
“Victor has never believed death certificates.”
Daniel walked to the small window in the consultation room. It looked onto a brick wall and a strip of night sky.
“What does he need from me?” he asked.
“The ledger, if it exists. Or confirmation that it doesn’t.”
“I burned it.”
Elias studied the back of his head.
“Did Nora?”
Daniel turned.
Elias continued. “You never handled paper if she was in the room. She said you folded everything wrong. Tax forms, school notices, grocery lists.”
“She had opinions.”
“She had a filing system.”
“She had anxiety.”
“She had both.”
Daniel returned to the table.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Nora may have made a copy.”
“She would have told me.”
“Would she?”
Daniel’s first impulse was anger. The second was memory.
Nora standing in the doorway of their bedroom, seven years ago, holding a manila envelope against her chest.
You don’t get to protect me by deciding what I’m allowed to know.
He had taken the envelope from her and locked it in a steel box beneath the garage floor. Two days later, he fed the ledger into an industrial furnace at a scrapyard Elias controlled.
Nora had watched from the car.
She had said nothing during the drive home.
Daniel rubbed his thumb against the edge of the table.
“Her belongings are in storage,” he said.
“I know.”
“Most of them.”
“Where are the rest?”
“At the house.”
“Has anyone been inside?”
“I have an alarm.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Daniel thought of the kitchen window he had found unlatched three weeks earlier. Toby had blamed himself, though he could not remember opening it. Daniel had checked the rooms, found nothing disturbed, and replaced the latch.
He took out his phone.
His home security application showed the system armed. No alerts. The live feed from the front camera displayed his empty porch and the blue plastic scooter Toby had left beside the steps.
Elias watched his face.
“Something?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
Dr. Ortiz appeared at the consultation-room door.
“Mr. Sinclair, Toby is asking for you.”
Daniel returned to the hospital room and sat beside the bed. Toby’s eyelids looked heavy. Celia occupied the chair near the window, arms folded against her stomach. She did not look at Daniel.
The doctor dimmed the lights.
“Toby needs rest,” she said. “One adult may stay overnight.”
“I will,” Daniel and Celia said together.
Toby looked from one to the other.
Daniel waited.
Celia stood. “I need to check on Peanut anyway.”
“How is he?” Toby asked.
The question came out thick with exhaustion.
Celia smiled, and the effort nearly broke her face.
“He ate part of a dish towel. Again.”
“Is he gonna die?”
“No, sweetheart. The vet says he has the stomach of a garbage truck.”
Toby’s mouth moved toward a smile.
Celia bent and kissed his hair. She kept her face turned so the bruised side would not be pressed.
“I’m sorry I left you,” she whispered.
Toby stared at the blanket.
“You said Grandpa was nice now.”
Celia closed her eyes.
“I was wrong.”
“He said you always get things wrong.”
Daniel looked at his sister.
Celia straightened slowly.
“What else did he say?” Daniel asked.
Dr. Ortiz raised a hand. “Not tonight. He’s tired, and formal questioning should be handled carefully so his account isn’t influenced.”
Daniel nodded.
Toby looked at him. “Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Grandpa said I’d be in trouble if I told.”
“You are not in trouble.”
“He said you’d go away.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
“I’m right here.”
“But later?”
The question held no accusation. That made it worse.
Daniel pulled his chair closer.
“I’m staying tonight.”
“That’s not later.”
“No.” Daniel rested his hand on the blanket near Toby’s. “It isn’t.”
Toby turned his face away.
Celia stood beside the bed for another moment, then walked out.
Elias had gone by the time Daniel checked the corridor. In his place, a business card rested beneath Daniel’s phone on the empty chair.
The card contained no name, only a number written in blue ink.
Daniel tore it in half and put both pieces in his pocket.
At two in the morning, Toby woke vomiting.
Daniel held the plastic basin while a nurse checked his pupils. Toby began crying then, not loudly, but with a helpless shame that made him apologize between breaths.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I got it on your jacket.”
“It’s a jacket.”
“It smells bad.”
“It already smelled bad.”
The nurse gave Daniel a brief look that might have been approval.
Toby’s crying softened.
After the nurse changed the bedding, Daniel helped settle him against the pillows. The boy’s body felt frighteningly light beneath the hospital gown. Daniel remembered carrying him through the house during thunderstorms when he was four, Toby’s legs wrapped around his waist, his breath warm against Daniel’s neck.
Back then, safety had seemed like a room Daniel could build and lock.
He had been wrong.
Toby fell asleep holding two of Daniel’s fingers.
Daniel stayed awake.
At four seventeen, his phone vibrated.
The message came from an unknown number.
YOU SHOULD HAVE ANSWERED ME.
A second message followed.
HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN HURT.
Daniel stared at the words until the screen dimmed.
He took screenshots, turned off automatic deletion, and forwarded them to Officer Parker’s department email. Then he called the number.
A recording said it was no longer in service.
He walked into the bathroom and locked the door.
For several seconds he stood over the sink, breathing through his nose.
May you like
The mirror showed Toby’s vomit on the sleeve of his navy jacket. Daniel wet a paper towel and rubbed at the stain. The water spread it wider.
He remembered a man named Louis Ferran begging in a warehouse office while Daniel wiped blood from his cuff in nearly the same motion. Ferran had owed Victor sixty thousand dollars. Daniel had broken two fingers and left the third untouched because Victor believed uncertainty frightened people more than pain.
