Chương 4
“For eleven days.”
That admission cost her more than Claire expected.
“What changed?”
“He told me you called him from the bridge. Your phone records showed no outgoing call to him. When I asked again, he said he meant Margaret had called. Then Margaret said she had been asleep.”
“So you investigated.”
“I became unpleasant.”
“You were already unpleasant.”
This time Claire’s smile formed properly, though it hurt her cheeks.
Emma let out a breath that became a laugh and then covered her mouth with one hand. The laugh sounded wrong in the hospital room, which made it more necessary.
A nurse entered to check Claire’s blood pressure and asked Emma to move her coffee away from the equipment. Emma moved it exactly six inches. The nurse moved it another foot.
Afterward, Claire said, “What else changed?”
Emma sat again.
“David refinanced two company properties. He sold the Wilkinsburg warehouse to a limited-liability company tied to one of his former partners. He fired your controller. Daniel started questioning the trust distributions. Your mother’s house went into foreclosure, then suddenly didn’t. The police closed the crash investigation as driver error pending new evidence.”
“Whose error?”
“Yours.”
Claire absorbed that.
Her body had been found fifty yards downstream from the car, caught against a maintenance platform by her coat. David had not been found because no one had looked for him. He had walked away in rain, called Margaret, changed his clothes, and returned to the hospital after rescue crews identified Claire.
At least that was the shape Emma believed.
“What did the recording show after the seat belt?”
“Not enough.”
“Who climbed out?”
“We hear movement. Water. David breathing. Then the video cuts.”
“Do we hear me?”
Emma looked at her.
“Once.”
“What do I say?”
“You say his name.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Claire imagined her own voice in black water, calling to a man who had already decided what survival required.
“Play it.”
“No.”
“It’s mine.”
“It is evidence now.”
“You copied it.”
“The copy is evidence too.”
“Emma.”
“You’ve been conscious for less than a day.”
“So everyone gets to know what happened except me?”
“We don’t know what happened.”
“You know more than I do.”
“Yes.”
The bluntness stopped them both.
Emma set the coffee down. “I’m sorry.”
Claire watched her friend’s fingers close around the cup until the lid buckled.
“I hate that sentence,” Claire said.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Emma nodded once. “Probably not.”
Margaret returned the next morning carrying a cardigan Claire recognized as her own. It was gray, soft at the cuffs, and smelled faintly of the cedar blocks in her apartment closet.
“I thought you might want something familiar,” Margaret said.
Claire looked at the cardigan and remembered wearing it to a Sunday lunch where David had complained about municipal tax assessments. The memory arrived intact except for the date.
Margaret placed it across the back of the chair.
Her brown bob had grown out unevenly around her ears. The tired lines in her face had deepened. She had always been a careful dresser, even for the grocery store, but one button of her cardigan was in the wrong hole.
“Are the papers gone?” Claire asked.
“Daniel took them.”
“Did you sign anything before yesterday?”
“No.”
Margaret sat.
Claire waited.
Margaret folded her hands. “There were medical authorizations. Insurance appeals. The nursing aide contract.”
“Company papers.”
“No.”
“Did you know David was driving?”
Margaret’s fingers tightened.
Outside the glass, Rachel wrote on a chart. She glanced in, saw both women sitting still, and continued writing.
“Claire, you need to understand what those first hours were like.”
“That sounds like yes.”
“I got a call from him. He was shouting. I could barely make out what he said.”
“What did he say?”
“That there had been an accident.”
“Where was he?”
Margaret looked down. “Near the bridge.”
“Not at your house.”
“No.”
“Why did you tell police he was?”
“He said you had grabbed the wheel.”
Claire’s mouth went dry.
“He said you were angry and that you grabbed the wheel. He said the car went through the barrier and he got out, but he couldn’t reach you. He thought you were dead.”
“So you lied.”
“He was in shock.”
“You lied.”
Margaret pressed her lips together.
“Did he come to your house?”
“Yes.”
“Before the police?”
“Yes.”
“Wet?”
Margaret nodded.
“Did you see blood?”
“A little on his forehead.”
“Did he change clothes?”
“He said he was freezing.”
“Whose clothes?”
“Your father’s old things. There were still some in the hall closet.”
Claire had not known that. Her father had been dead nine years. Margaret had told her she donated everything after the first anniversary.
“What happened to David’s clothes?”
Margaret’s eyes moved toward the window.
“Mom.”
“I washed them.”
The monitor registered Claire’s pulse before her face did.
“Why?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“You put wet clothes in a washing machine.”
“He told me there was fuel in the water. He said the smell would make him sick.”
“And his shoes?”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
“Did you wash his shoes?”
“I threw them out.”
Claire closed her eyes.
The room seemed to shift beneath the bed, the same slow, impossible tilt as a car losing contact with pavement.
Margaret reached toward her and stopped.
“I believed him.”
“You chose him.”
“He had just crawled out of a river.”
“I was still in it.”
The sentence landed quietly.
Margaret’s face folded, but she did not cry out. She put both hands over her mouth and breathed through her fingers.
Claire wanted to feel only anger. Anger was clean and kept the room upright. Instead she saw Margaret at two in the morning loading her dead husband’s clothes into David’s shaking hands. She saw a frightened woman accepting the first explanation that allowed her brother to remain someone she knew.
That compassion disgusted Claire.
“How long before you called 911?”
“I thought he had called.”
“How long?”
May you like
“Fourteen minutes.”
The number had been waiting somewhere.
