Chương 3
Everyone looked at her again.
For most of her life, being the center of her family’s attention had meant birthday candles, school recitals, some story Richard thought she had exaggerated, or Diane asking whether she was eating enough.
This was different.
She wanted to disappear behind Claire.
Instead, she stayed where she was.
“It’s a storage locker,” Emma said. “At a private facility near Mercy Central.”
“What’s in it?”
“An old phone. Copies of messages. Photos. Some documents.”
“What kind of documents?”
“I don’t know how to explain all of them quickly.”
The officer waited.
Emma forced herself to continue.
“I started keeping things after the second hospital visit.”
“Why there?”
“Because Daniel searched the house.”
Daniel spoke from the other end of the corridor.
“That’s not true.”
The officer beside him told him not to interrupt.
Daniel smiled politely.
Emma went on.
“I kept a bag in my car. He found that. Then I put things at Claire’s for a while, but I was afraid he’d follow me there.”
Claire said, “He did.”
The officer looked at her.
“Once that I know of.”
Daniel’s voice sharpened.
“I drove my wife to meet a friend.”
Claire did not look at him.
Emma said, “I rented the locker under my own name.”
The officer asked, “Does he have access?”
“No.”
Claire opened her hand, showing the small silver key.
The officer looked at Daniel.
“So why did he react when she gave you that?”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
“I reacted because this has become absurd.”
Emma almost heard him say the version he used at home.
Look what you’re making me deal with.
An ambulance crew checked her in one of the small hotel conference rooms. Emma sat on the edge of a banquet chair under fluorescent lights while a paramedic examined her cheek. The bruise around her left eye was older. The swelling from the slap was new. They asked questions she had answered before and would answer again.
Did she feel safe going home?
No.
Did she have somewhere safe to stay?
Emma glanced at Claire.
“Yes.”
Claire did not correct her, though they had never discussed where.
When the paramedic left, Diane remained near the closed conference-room door.
Claire stood by the far wall.
Emma’s mother stared at the carpet.
“I thought he was taking care of you.”
Emma watched her.
Diane’s sequined gown looked almost obscene under conference-room lighting. Earlier that evening, photographers had taken pictures of her beneath crystal chandeliers beside an ice sculpture and a wall covered in donor names. She had been laughing in half of them.
“He was very good at looking like that,” Emma said.
Diane’s eyes filled.
She blinked quickly.
“He called me every time you had a bad week.”
“What did he say?”
“That you weren’t sleeping. That you were anxious. That you were embarrassed and didn’t want us to know.”
Emma waited.
Her mother rubbed one thumb over the other.
“He said you needed patience.”
Emma looked down at the red mark in her palm from the key.
“Did you ever ask me?”
Diane’s head lifted.
“Of course I asked you.”
“No. You asked if I was taking my medication. You asked if I was eating. You asked whether Daniel was getting enough sleep because he looked tired.”
Diane’s mouth opened.
Closed.
From the far wall, Claire looked at the floor.
Emma had never loved her more for pretending not to hear.
Diane sat in the chair opposite.
“I’m sorry.”
Emma’s body reacted before her mind did.
Her shoulders hardened.
“Don’t.”
“I am.”
“Not yet.”
Diane stared at her.
Emma’s voice shook.
“I can’t make you feel better yet.”
Her mother’s face crumpled for only a second. Then she pressed her lips together and nodded.
“All right.”
It was the first useful thing either of them had done.
Daniel was taken from the hotel later that night after the officers finished their initial interviews and reviewed enough of the security footage to continue acting on the complaint. Nobody announced what would happen next. Nobody promised Emma a conviction or a clean ending. An officer explained procedures in careful language, gave her a case number, and told her that the next steps would depend on several things beyond that night.
Emma barely heard half of it.
She was watching Daniel.
As he was escorted past the conference-room doorway, he turned his head toward her.
No anger.
No panic.
He looked disappointed.
That expression had controlled her for years.
It did nothing now.
Or almost nothing.
Her stomach still contracted.
Her fingers still went cold.
But she did not look away.
Daniel did.
At 1:17 in the morning, Claire drove Emma, Ryan, and Richard to the storage facility.
Diane stayed behind to speak with hotel staff and retrieve their belongings from the gala. Emma suspected her mother also needed twenty minutes in which nobody asked her anything.
The city had gone slick with a brief summer rain. Reflections moved across the windshield as Claire drove. No one spoke for six blocks.
Ryan finally said, “I should’ve broken his jaw.”
Emma leaned her head against the cool passenger window.
“That would’ve helped me so much.”
“I know. I’m just saying.”
“You’ve been saying it for forty minutes.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard, sitting beside him in the back seat, said, “Stop.”
Ryan turned.
“No.”
“Not tonight.”
“That’s exactly what you said in March, apparently.”
Richard stared out his window.
“Ryan.”
“No, Dad. You don’t get to use the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The boardroom voice. The one where everybody shuts up because you’ve decided the conversation is over.”
Claire glanced at the rearview mirror.
“Ryan.”
He crossed his arms.
“At least when she says it, it works.”
Emma gave a tired sound that might have been a laugh.
Ryan looked at her.
For a moment, none of them knew what to do with the fact that she had laughed.
May you like
Then Claire said, “The facility is on the right.”
The locker building occupied the ground floor of a converted parking structure between a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and a closed coffee shop. The lobby smelled like dust, floor cleaner, and the rubber mats people tracked rain onto.
