Chương 4
Nora had learned about Eva from an online headline. She had learned about Lily’s recent shooting from another.
The voice message predated both.
“I have a message,” Nora said.
Dominic closed his eyes for less than a second.
Ruiz held out her hand. “Where?”
“On my phone.”
“Show me.”
The phone was upstairs in the room Dominic’s housekeeper had given her. Two officers accompanied Nora. Dominic followed despite Ruiz’s instruction, and Ruiz followed him because she understood that instructions were not restraints.
The guest room overlooked the winter garden. Eva had chosen its wallpaper, small blue leaves on a cream background, and Nora had spent four nights trying not to imagine her standing on a ladder comparing samples.
Her phone lay beside the bed.
The missed message from Eva had arrived at 2:13 a.m. on January eighth.
Eva died January eleventh.
Nora opened it.
A waveform appeared beneath Eva’s name.
Dominic stopped three feet from her.
“You never listened?” he asked.
“Not all of it.”
“Why?”
Nora touched the play icon.
Eva’s voice filled the room.
“Nora, it’s me. I know what time it is. I know I have no right to call after the way I left things. You can hate me later. I need you to do something now.”
There was a pause. Faint piano music played somewhere behind her.
“If I call again and say the words ‘October road,’ come for Lily. Don’t call Dominic first. Don’t ask permission. Take the rabbit from her room and the bracelet from her wrist. There are people in this house who smile at her every day and would let her die if it protected them.”
Dominic moved toward the phone.
Ruiz lifted one hand. He stopped.
Eva continued.
“I don’t know yet who. That’s the truth. I have suspicions, and I’m trying not to become the kind of frightened person who confuses suspicion with proof. You taught me that, though I pretended I taught myself.”
A brief sound came through the recording, something like a door closing.
Eva lowered her voice.
“Dominic loves Lily. I need you to remember that, even when you’re angry with him. But love doesn’t make him safe. Sometimes it makes him more dangerous because he believes anything done for love becomes clean afterward.”
Dominic looked toward the window.
“If I’m wrong,” Eva said, “you can tell me I ruined your sleep. If I’m right, I’m sorry. I am so sorry I waited until I needed you to admit you were the person I trusted most.”
The message ended.
No second call had come.
No one spoke.
A delivery truck moved along the road beyond the winter garden. Its brakes squealed. Somewhere downstairs, an officer asked a guard to repeat his name.
Dominic reached for the phone.
Ruiz took it first.
“I’ll need this preserved,” she said.
Nora nodded.
Dominic’s hand remained suspended between them for a moment before he let it fall.
“She never said October road,” Nora said.
“You would have come if she had?”
The question contained no accusation. That made it harder.
“I don’t know.”
“You came for a news report.”
“Three days after the shooting.”
“Four.”
“I had to arrange—”
“Four days.”
Nora folded her arms, then unfolded them because it made her look defensive. “I was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked at her for several seconds. “Good.”
Ruiz left them alone only after telling an officer to stand outside.
Dominic went to the window. His reflection floated over the winter garden, tattoos and black cloth superimposed on bare rose stems.
“Eva knew someone inside the house was involved,” he said.
“She suspected.”
“She warned you instead of me.”
“She told me you loved Lily.”
“That was generous.”
“She also told me love didn’t make you safe.”
He turned. “Do you agree?”
Nora thought of the basement, the guards who waited to be told whether a wounded man deserved an ambulance, and Marcus escaping through a tunnel built to protect this family from the world outside.
“Yes.”
Dominic accepted the answer with a slight movement of his jaw.
“Why did the date matter?” he asked.
Nora opened her palm. The wolf bracelet lay across it.
“October seventeenth was the night Eva and I promised that if either of us ever became someone she didn’t recognize, the other would come without being invited.”
“Did she become someone you didn’t recognize?”
“We both did.”
The police arranged to transfer Lily to a children’s hospital in New York before sunset. Dr. Mehta supported the move because the mansion’s medical wing, despite its equipment, had become a crime scene with compromised security.
Dominic argued for a private hospital suite under his control.
Nora argued against every word in that sentence.
Lily woke during the disagreement.
She did not cry. She watched their faces with the exhausted caution of a child who had recently learned that adults could say safe while preparing for danger.
“Is Mr. Marcus mad at me?” she asked.
Dominic went to her bed.
“No.”
“He looked mad.”
“He was afraid.”
“Of Nora?”
Dominic glanced back. “Yes.”
Lily considered that. “Nora hit him with the food tray.”
“It was a medical tray,” Nora said.
Lily’s mouth moved slightly. Not a smile, but close.
Dominic touched her hair. “We’re taking you to another hospital.”
“Is Nora coming?”
“Yes.”
The answer came from both adults.
Lily looked between them. “You said it at the same time.”
“We won’t make a habit of it,” Nora said.
This time Lily smiled, then winced because even that pulled at the incision beneath her gown.
May you like
At the hospital, county police positioned officers outside Lily’s room while Dominic’s guards remained at the end of the corridor. The two groups watched one another with professional dislike.
Nora changed into dark slacks and a blue sweater someone from the mansion packed for her. Her white blouse had Marcus’s blood on one cuff and a tear where Lily had grabbed it. She folded it into a paper bag rather than let the housekeeper throw it away.
