Chương 4
“I don’t know what ‘this’ was.”
Then:
“Vanessa grabbed her.”
Nathan looked at Laura.
Laura looked at the floor.
“She didn’t hit her at first.”
More silence.
“She tried to take the folder.”
Nathan’s head lifted.
“What folder?” he whispered.
Laura shook her head.
From inside the room Ethan said, “The blue one.”
Harper asked something Nathan could not hear.
“Rosa told me to take Sophie upstairs.”
Another pause.
“I didn’t.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
Of course Ethan had not.
He was eight.
He had inherited Nathan’s worst quality: when told not to look at something, he looked harder.
Ethan continued.
“Vanessa said Dad would believe her.”
The sentence entered Nathan with no visible effect.
At least he hoped none.
Laura stood beside him without moving.
Harper asked another question.
Ethan said, “Rosa said, ‘Not this time.’”
Nathan leaned against the wall.
The house was quiet except for distant voices in the foyer and the hum of the refrigerator.
He noticed a small scratch on the baseboard beside his shoe.
He had complained about that scratch the previous week.
He had sent a photo of it to Rosa.
Can you ask the painters to fix this?
She had answered with a thumbs-up.
Nathan stared at it until the scratch blurred.
Ethan said, “Then Vanessa pushed her.”
Harper’s voice remained calm.
“Show me how.”
Nathan heard a chair move.
“She went backward. Her head hit the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The table.”
“What happened then?”
“She didn’t get up.”
The silence after that was different.
Harper asked, “Where was Sophie?”
“She came down because I yelled.”
“Then what?”
“Vanessa told us Rosa was fine.”
“Was Rosa moving?”
“No.”
“Did Vanessa call anybody?”
“No.”
“What did she do?”
Another pause.
“She took Rosa’s phone.”
Nathan straightened.
“She told us to go downstairs because there was glass.”
“What glass?”
“There wasn’t any.”
Harper did not speak for several seconds.
Ethan said, “I knew she was lying.”
Nathan looked at Laura.
Laura’s expression had tightened.
“Then she put us in the room.”
Harper asked, “Did you see what happened to Rosa after that?”
“No.”
“Did Vanessa come back?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
Ethan’s voice became nearly inaudible.
“She asked what I was going to tell Dad.”
Nathan stepped away from the door.
He walked into the kitchen.
He needed water and poured too much into a glass. It overflowed onto his hand.
He stood at the sink while it ran between his fingers.
Laura came in behind him.
“Turn it off.”
Nathan looked at the faucet.
He shut it.
“What did I miss?” he asked.
“What?”
“What did I miss before today?”
Laura did not answer immediately.
That was one reason Nathan paid her an amount of money he preferred not to calculate annually. She did not lie quickly.
“You want the legal answer or the friend answer?”
“I’m not asking my lawyer.”
“You always say that right before asking your lawyer.”
“Laura.”
She leaned against the island.
“The friend answer is I don’t know.”
“You’ve met her.”
“I’ve met Vanessa at events.”
“You’ve had dinner here.”
“Twice.”
“You noticed things.”
Laura watched him.
“Yes.”
He waited.
“She manages the room.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
“No. Say it.”
“It means conversations bend around her. If someone makes her uncomfortable, the topic changes. If the kids act up, they become the problem before anybody asks why they’re acting up. If you disagree with her in public, she makes a joke so everyone knows you’re being unreasonable without her having to say you’re unreasonable.”
Nathan stared at her.
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
“That’s convenient.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“There he is.”
“What?”
“The man who wants this to be everybody’s missed signal except his.”
Nathan put the glass down too hard.
“I just found my children behind a locked gate.”
“I know.”
“My housekeeper may be hurt.”
“I know.”
“And you’re choosing now to—”
“Yes,” Laura said. “Now. Because tomorrow you’re going to start turning this into a problem you can solve with personnel. Security. Counsel. Therapists. Schools. You’re going to organize it. Before you do that, maybe sit with the possibility that people around you saw pieces of something and learned you didn’t want to hear them.”
Nathan opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Laura looked toward the sitting-room door.
“Ethan once told me Vanessa hated Rosa.”
Nathan frowned.
“When?”
“Christmas party. Last year. He said it like kids say things. I asked why. He said Vanessa called Rosa ‘too familiar.’ You walked up before he explained.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do.”
Nathan rubbed his eyes.
Christmas party.
He remembered Ethan spilling sparkling water on a rug. Vanessa had made him apologize to a donor standing nearby although the donor had not cared.
He remembered telling Ethan to stop being rude when Ethan refused.
He did not remember Laura’s conversation.
Detective Harper came into the kitchen.
“We need to locate Rosa Alvarez.”
Nathan nodded toward the bagged phone.
“Can you use that?”
“We’ll handle it.”
“There’s a tracker on her car.”
Harper looked at him.
Nathan corrected himself.
“The house uses a transportation app. Household vehicles. Rosa drives one of mine sometimes.”
“Is she driving one of your vehicles now?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus appeared at the kitchen doorway.
“Her assigned Volvo is gone.”
Harper turned.
“Can you access location history?”
Marcus nodded.
“Don’t,” Harper said.
Marcus stopped.
“We’ll get consent or a warrant if we need one.”
“It’s my vehicle,” Nathan said.
Harper looked at him.
“Then you can consent to us accessing location information belonging to the vehicle, but I still want it documented properly.”
The distinction annoyed Nathan.
Again, he forced himself to hear it.
Laura pulled up the fleet-management account with him.
The Volvo’s last signal was at 11:07 a.m. in a medical-center parking garage fifteen miles away.
May you like
Harper made a call.
Twenty-two minutes later they learned Rosa had been brought to the emergency department by an unknown woman who left before registration was complete.
