Chương 2
He could hear the front door slowly swinging on its hinge behind him.
Margaret said, “I can explain.”
He turned the photograph toward her.
“When were you in my house?”
She did not answer.
“When?”
“Nathan—”
“You weren’t hiding from us.” He held Sophie’s passport beside the picture and lifted his eyes to Margaret’s. The fury in him had lost its heat. What remained was colder and much more useful. “You came back to steal her.”
Margaret took one step backward.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
Outside, somewhere down the block, a lawn mower ran with the irritating steadiness of normal life.
Nathan had never hated a normal sound before.
He took out his phone.
Margaret’s gaze moved to it.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think?”
“Calling the police is not going to make this simpler.”
“I’m not interested in simpler.”
“Nathan, listen to me.”
“No.”
“You listened to Julia.”
His thumb stopped above the screen.
Margaret saw it.
That was the first mistake Nathan made that afternoon: letting her see that his dead wife’s name still had the power to stop his hand.
Julia had been gone two years and eleven months. Nathan did not count the days anymore. He had forced himself to stop after the first year because the counting had begun to feel like a second death, one that occurred every morning when his phone showed another date she would never see.
Margaret had supposedly been dead long before that.
Eight years earlier, a rental car registered in her name had gone through a guardrail in western Pennsylvania and entered a rain-swollen river. The car had been recovered. Margaret had not. A coat containing her identification had been wedged beneath a damaged seat. Blood matching her type had been found inside. After searches, hearings, paperwork, arguments with insurance companies, and one terrible year in which Julia kept believing the next phone call would bring an explanation, Margaret Vale had legally become what everyone believed she already was.
Dead.
Julia had cried at a memorial service beside an urn that contained no body.
Nathan had stood behind her with one hand against the middle of her back.
Now Margaret stood ten feet away wearing polished flats.
“You don’t get to use her name,” he said.
Margaret’s expression tightened. “You have no idea what she knew.”
Nathan pressed the emergency-call button.
Margaret moved toward the door.
He stood automatically.
Sophie grabbed his wrist.
Not his hand.
His wrist.
Hard.
Nathan looked down.
She did not say, Don’t let her leave.
She said, “Don’t leave me.”
That was the second thing that changed the afternoon.
Nathan let Margaret go.
He hated himself for it for nearly three hours.
Later, he would understand it had been the right decision.
Margaret stepped backward through the doorway without turning around. She looked at Sophie once more.
There was hunger in the look.
Not affection exactly.
Something more possessive.
“You were supposed to hear the truth from me,” she said.
Nathan put himself between them again.
Margaret left.
By the time the emergency dispatcher had Nathan confirming the address and describing her clothing, the driveway was empty.
The response that followed became a blur of locked doors, repeated questions, photographs, inventory, and Sophie refusing to let go of the hem of Nathan’s shirt. Nathan learned quickly that the human brain could become intensely interested in stupid details when frightened. He noticed that one of Margaret’s pearl earrings had been slightly lower than the other. He noticed the glass lamp beside the sofa had been left on despite daylight. He noticed his right boot had left a pale scrape across one chrome leg of the overturned chair.
He kept thinking about that scrape while answering questions.
Perhaps because it was easier than thinking about the photograph.
The handbag left with the responding officers as evidence. So did the money, passport, itinerary, photograph, and Margaret’s fingerprints wherever investigators could recover them. Nathan had photographed everything before it went. One officer told him that was fine. Another told him not to share the pictures with anyone. They spoke carefully around Sophie.
Margaret, they discovered within hours, had not boarded the Lisbon flight.
The ticket had been issued in Sophie’s name that morning.
No return.
There was no second printed ticket in the handbag, but investigators believed Margaret probably had her own travel documents elsewhere.
Nathan was told to keep his phone on.
He did.
By midnight, he hated the thing.
Sophie finally fell asleep on the sofa with both fists tucked under her chin. She refused her bedroom.
Nathan did not argue.
He sat on the floor beside her and watched the front door.
At two in the morning, he got up and checked the deadbolt.
At two fifteen, he checked again.
At two twenty-six, he stood in the kitchen with his hand around a glass of water and could not remember whether he had checked the back door.
He checked it.
At two thirty-one, Sophie spoke from the dark living room.
“Dad?”
Nathan returned immediately.
Her eyes were open.
“Yeah.”
“Is she really dead?”
He sat beside her.
That question had no useful answer.
“She was supposed to be.”
Sophie considered this. Seven-year-olds could be strangely practical about impossible things.
“Like on paper?”
“Yeah.”
“So she lied?”
“I think so.”
Sophie pulled the blanket higher.
“Is she Mom’s mom?”
Nathan looked at her.
Sophie’s voice became smaller.
“She told me.”
He had believed he had used up his capacity for surprise.
Apparently not.
“What else did she tell you?”
Sophie stared at the blanket.
“That Mom missed her.”
Nathan’s mouth went dry.
“When did she tell you that?”
Sophie did not answer.
He waited.
May you like
The old version of Nathan, the one who had spent the first year after Julia died trying to make every problem surrender to sufficient effort, would have asked again immediately. He had learned something from raising Sophie alone: pressure sometimes produced silence and then produced a lie.
He waited longer.
