Chương 8
“You need to come home.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“There are police here.”
“Because Daniel kidnapped Sophie.”
“And because Maya found a phone.”
Silence.
Laura sat very still.
“What phone?”
She had not said whose.
Marcus continued too quickly.
“What are you talking about?”
“An old phone.”
“I don’t know anything about an old phone.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
Another silence.
Longer.
“Laura.”
She almost told herself not to overinterpret it.
That reflex sickened her.
“What kind of phone?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did Daniel give it to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Maya coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are the police talking to her?”
“I don’t know.”
His breathing changed.
Laura pressed the phone more tightly to her ear.
Then Marcus said, “Do not let Daniel put ideas in your head.”
Laura laughed.
A real laugh this time, though nothing was funny.
“For forty-three days, every thought I had about my own daughter somehow ended with Daniel.”
“Because he manipulated her.”
“Maybe.”
“He did.”
“Maybe.”
“He took her out of the country.”
“Yes.”
“He kidnapped her.”
“I don’t know what he did.”
“Why are you suddenly defending him?”
“I’m not.”
“You sound like you are.”
Laura looked at the closed office door behind which Sophie slept.
“I think that’s the problem.”
“What is?”
“I thought there were only two sides.”
Marcus became very quiet.
“Come home.”
“No.”
“Laura.”
“No.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
She had forgotten he was staying at her house.
Her daughters’ house.
The realization was so absurdly ordinary that it hurt.
“A hotel.”
“You’re throwing me out because Daniel staged some insane stunt?”
“I’m asking you to leave tonight.”
“Laura.”
“I’ll have somebody bring your things tomorrow.”
“Somebody?”
“I don’t want you there when I come home.”
He laughed once.
Coldly.
“This is unbelievable.”
Laura almost apologized.
The impulse rose automatically.
She swallowed it.
“Leave the key on the kitchen counter.”
Marcus hung up.
Laura stayed in the chair for several minutes.
Then she stood, walked to the restroom, and threw up.
Victoria found her there later, rinsing her mouth.
Neither woman mentioned it.
At 2:06 a.m., Daniel’s attorney arrived.
Naomi Feld was fifty-three, wore a navy raincoat over workout clothes, and looked as if she had been awakened in the middle of an argument she had predicted months ago.
She walked into Conference Two, shut the door, and stared at Daniel.
“What did I tell you?”
Daniel leaned back.
“Can we skip that?”
“No.”
“Naomi.”
“What did I tell you forty-three days ago?”
“To keep Maya in Florida.”
“And?”
“To file immediately.”
“And?”
“Not to make unilateral travel decisions.”
“And tonight?”
Daniel covered his face.
“I know.”
“No, I need to hear you say it because I have spent six weeks telling a judge you are a frightened father making imperfect decisions, and tonight you decided to become Exhibit A for opposing counsel.”
“I was bringing her back.”
“You were taking another child out first.”
“I panicked.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Maya found something.”
“I heard.”
“She may have proof.”
“Then that should have been handled through law enforcement.”
“I didn’t know until tonight.”
“Because you stopped listening to her voicemail.”
Daniel looked away.
Naomi’s anger softened for half a second.
Then returned.
“Why?”
“She said she wanted to come home.”
“So?”
“I thought I’d fixed it.”
Naomi stared at him.
There was the whole man.
Daniel Carter had built a career fixing distressed companies.
He was hired when executives had stopped trusting one another and lenders were threatening covenants and everyone needed somebody who could reduce chaos to a spreadsheet.
He did the same thing at home.
Problems became tasks.
Pain became action.
When Maya had called barefoot from a gas station, he had not known how to sit beside his daughter and say, I believe you, and I am scared too.
So he had moved her.
Across an ocean.
When she wanted to come home, he moved Sophie.
When the manifest created a problem, he reused Maya’s reservation.
Each decision solved the problem directly in front of him.
Each one created a worse problem behind it.
Naomi sat.
“Do you understand that even if every concern you had about Marcus was justified, what you did to Sophie tonight was still wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that protecting one child does not allow you to deceive another?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that the court may restrict your contact?”
His eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“Do you understand Laura may ask for emergency custody?”
“Yes.”
“And do you understand that none of those consequences mean you should now minimize what Maya reported?”
Daniel looked at her.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Naomi took out a legal pad.
“Now we stop trying to win.”
Daniel gave a humorless laugh.
“What are we doing instead?”
“Trying not to damage your children more than you already have.”
At 3:12 a.m., Detective Shaw spoke with Maya by encrypted video from a quiet room in Rachel Carter’s house in Eleuthera.
Maya appeared on screen wearing an oversized University of Miami sweatshirt Daniel had bought her two Christmases earlier.
Her hair was shorter.
Laura noticed immediately.
Maya had cut it herself.
Unevenly.
Laura wanted to say something about the bangs.
She did not.
Only Shaw and a child-interview specialist spoke during the first part of the call.
Laura and Daniel watched from separate rooms.
Sophie remained asleep.
Maya described the night she left home.
Marcus had entered her bedroom after midnight.
He had said he was checking whether her window was locked because of a storm.
Maya had been changing clothes.
He had his phone in his hand.
She told him to leave.
He did.
Later she confronted her mother.
Laura asked whether Maya might have misread the situation.
That sentence had become the hinge of everything.
“I didn’t need her to arrest him,” Maya said.
Her voice remained flat.
“I needed her to tell him to leave.”
Shaw asked, “What happened instead?”
“Mom cried.”
Laura covered her face.
May you like
Maya continued.
“Then Marcus came in and acted offended that I thought he was creepy.”
