Chương 8
“Maybe so she could feel like she was helping,” Sarah told Walter months later.
They were eating burgers in his truck beside a public park.
It was the first time Sarah had agreed to be alone with him outside a therapist’s office or Linda’s house.
Walter unwrapped his food and realized he had no appetite.
“She sent the picture.”
“Yes.”
“Why then?”
Sarah looked through the windshield.
“Russell started talking about moving.”
“Moving you?”
“The house. Selling it.”
Walter tightened his grip on the wrapper.
“He said the room wouldn’t work anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
Sarah looked at him.
Walter stopped.
“Sorry.”
She nodded.
After a moment she continued.
“Claire asked me if I still remembered your address.”
Walter turned.
“You gave it to her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Sarah picked a pickle from her burger.
“Because by then I didn’t believe anything she promised.”
The answer hurt in a strange place.
Not because Sarah had withheld his address.
Because captivity had taught her to distrust rescue.
“Then how did she find me?”
“Your missing posters.”
Walter looked down.
Of course.
His address had not been on them.
But his full name had.
His workplace had once been quoted in a local article.
Anybody with determination could have found his house.
Claire had possessed freedom, a phone, a car, money, and fourteen months.
It still took her fourteen months.
Walter said, “I don’t forgive her.”
Sarah ate the pickle.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
He waited.
Sarah wiped salt from one finger.
“I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life making sure everybody hates her enough.”
Walter stared at her.
She shrugged.
“It’s tiring.”
The meeting between Sarah and Claire eventually happened under tightly controlled circumstances through their attorneys, investigators, and a victim-services coordinator.
Walter was not invited.
He objected.
Sarah ignored him.
He drove to work that morning and replaced a compressor in a grocery store freezer while imagining every possible version of the conversation.
At noon he texted Sarah.
Hope you’re okay.
He deleted a second message asking how it went.
At four fifteen she responded.
I am.
Nothing else.
Walter put the phone away.
He did not ask.
That evening he went home and tried to repair the porch railing.
It did not need repair.
He removed two perfectly good screws, replaced them with longer ones, then realized he had split the wood.
“Idiot.”
He sat on the porch step.
Across the street, a teenager practiced parallel parking while her mother leaned halfway out the passenger window giving instructions nobody could hear.
Walter watched the car bump the curb three times.
On the fourth attempt it slid perfectly into the space.
The mother clapped.
The girl put her forehead against the steering wheel.
Walter laughed.
His phone rang.
Sarah.
He answered.
“Hey.”
“Claire says she tried to leave Russell twice.”
Walter waited.
“She says the second time he found her at a motel and broke her phone. She showed her lawyer pictures from that.”
Walter looked at the damaged railing.
“Okay.”
“She says she thought he’d kill me if she called.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Some of it.”
He waited.
Sarah continued.
“She also admitted something.”
Walter’s shoulders tightened.
“She knew why he wanted me at the house.”
“What?”
“She knew he’d seen me before.”
Walter stood.
“Where?”
“The first cleaning job. He came home while I was there. I never saw him. Claire said he watched me from outside.”
Walter’s jaw clenched.
“She knew.”
“She knew he was interested in me.”
“And she called you back anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sarah’s voice went flat.
“He told her to.”
Walter walked off the porch.
He wanted motion.
“Then she helped him.”
“Yes.”
“She can call it fear. She can call it whatever she wants. She brought you there.”
“Yes.”
“And you still met her.”
Sarah was silent.
Walter stopped at the curb.
He could hear his own breathing.
“Sorry.”
“Claire said something else.”
“What?”
“She said the photograph wasn’t her first attempt.”
Walter frowned.
“She mailed a letter six months ago.”
“To who?”
“You.”
He stared at his house.
“I never got a letter.”
“She says she put it in our mailbox herself.”
Walter crossed the yard.
“What did it say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me exactly. Just that it said to look at Russell.”
Walter unlocked his front door.
The hallway was dark.
“I didn’t get it.”
“I know.”
“Did police find out what happened?”
“They’re looking.”
Walter turned on the kitchen light.
The missing-person flyer was no longer beside the refrigerator.
He had finally taken it down after Sarah asked him to.
He kept it in a drawer.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sound weird.”
Walter stared toward the kitchen table.
Six months earlier.
A letter.
His mind moved unwillingly toward a memory.
Snow near the curb.
A broken mailbox door.
His neighbor’s dog loose in his yard.
And Linda.
Linda standing at his kitchen counter with a stack of mail.
Walter stopped breathing.
“What?”
Sarah asked.
“I have to call you back.”
“Why?”
“I need to ask Linda something.”
He called his sister.
She answered after three rings.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did you take a letter out of my mailbox last winter?”
Silence.
Walter gripped the phone.
“Linda.”
“What kind of letter?”
“You tell me.”
“I took lots of mail inside when you were gone.”
“Did you throw anything away?”
Another silence.
Walter closed his eyes.
“Oh, God.”
“Linda.”
“I thought it was one of those people.”
“What people?”
“The freaks who kept writing you.”
During the search, Walter had received dozens of letters.
Psychics.
Religious tracts.
Anonymous accusations.
People claiming Sarah had been seen in places she had never visited.
One man in Arizona demanded two thousand dollars for coordinates.
Walter had forgotten how much garbage grief attracted.
“What did the letter say?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“It was typed. No return address.”
“What did it say?”
Linda began crying.
May you like
Walter pressed his palm against the counter.
“Stop crying and tell me.”
