Chương 3
“When?”
“The next morning.”
“And you called me.”
Claire said nothing.
Daniel stood again.
“You called me.”
“I tried.”
He waited.
“I knew your number by memory, but I kept getting the digits wrong. The nurse gave me my phone after they found one in lost property, but it wasn’t mine. I asked to use the desk phone. Before I could—”
Claire stopped.
Daniel felt something inside him close.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t give me a man in a dark coat. Don’t give me some stranger who walked into the hospital and threatened you. I cannot do that story.”
Claire looked almost offended.
“There was no man in a dark coat.”
“Good.”
“There was a phone call.”
Daniel rubbed both palms over his face.
“Of course there was.”
Claire’s expression hardened.
“You asked me to tell you.”
“Then tell me.”
“My room didn’t have a phone. A nurse came in and said someone had called the station asking for Claire Carter.”
Rachel glanced at Daniel.
Claire continued.
“I took it.”
“Who?”
“Ross Merrick.”
The name was familiar.
Founder and chief executive.
Claire’s boss.
Daniel had met him twice. Heavyset, expensive glasses, too much cologne, always talking about loyalty.
“He told me he was relieved I was alive,” Claire said.
“That sounds terrifying.”
“He told me to turn on the television.”
Daniel said nothing.
“There was a local report about the crash. They had already named me as the victim.”
“That fast?”
“My car. My purse. My employee badge. My coat on Jenna.”
“That is not an identification.”
“No.”
Daniel looked toward Rachel as if she might represent every public institution in America.
Rachel shook her head slightly.
“I can’t speak to how a county medical examiner made an identification four years ago.”
Claire nodded.
“They were calling it preliminary at first. Ross told me it would become final.”
Daniel stared at her.
“How would he know?”
“Because Merrick Health stored employee dental-plan records.”
Daniel frowned.
“That doesn’t mean he can identify a corpse.”
“No. But he could send records when the county requested them.”
“You’re telling me your employer switched dental records?”
“I’m telling you what I found later.”
“Later.”
Claire looked down.
“There’s a lot of later.”
The train rocked gently.
Lily rolled toward Daniel and muttered something in her sleep. Benny slipped to the floor.
Claire moved instinctively.
Daniel was faster.
He picked up the bear and put it back in Lily’s arms.
Claire stopped where she was.
The hurt on her face angered him.
“You don’t get to look like that.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
Claire glanced away.
Rachel touched her name badge as if checking that it was still there.
Her badge read RACHEL MONROE.
Daniel found the ordinary fact reassuring.
A stranger had a normal name.
A normal job.
A shift that would end.
“I need water,” he said.
Rachel reached into the small service cabinet in the corridor and handed him a sealed bottle.
Claire gave a brief, humorless smile.
“You still forget to drink water when you’re angry.”
Daniel twisted the cap too hard and spilled some on his hand.
“You lost the right to know what I do when I’m angry.”
The smile disappeared.
He drank anyway.
“What did Ross say?”
Claire breathed in through her nose.
“He said Lily had worn the red boots to preschool that morning.”
Daniel went still.
Lily had owned red rubber boots with ladybugs on the sides.
She had insisted on wearing them in December even when they made her socks damp.
“He said he had photographs.”
“Did he?”
“He texted them to the nurse’s station while I was on the phone.”
Daniel’s anger shifted direction.
Not toward belief.
Toward a memory.
Two weeks before Claire died, she had asked him whether anyone had ever waited outside Lily’s preschool.
He had laughed because the question sounded absurd.
Claire had said she was probably being paranoid.
Daniel had forgotten that conversation until now.
His hands became cold.
“What had you done?”
Claire met his eyes.
“I copied records from Merrick’s accounts.”
“Why?”
“Because they were stealing money.”
“Who is they?”
“Ross. Two executives. Possibly others. Patient trust accounts. Vendor kickbacks. False invoices. I didn’t understand all of it when I first found it.”
“You went to police?”
“No.”
“Federal investigators?”
“I called an attorney.”
Daniel stared.
“A whistleblower attorney?”
“Yes.”
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you were already working sixty-hour weeks. Lily had pneumonia that fall. Your mother was having surgery. And I was scared.”
“That is not a reason.”
“It was the reason.”
“You were married to me.”
“I know.”
Daniel stood so quickly that Rachel straightened.
He caught himself.
Claire did not move.
He lowered his voice.
“You were married to me, and some man was taking pictures of our daughter, and you decided I had enough going on?”
Claire’s eyes filled, but she did not cry.
“I decided I could fix it before you knew.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where you decide for everybody.”
Claire looked as though he had struck her.
Daniel regretted it for half a second.
Then Lily breathed deeply beside him, and the regret went away.
“What did Ross want?”
“The files.”
“You gave them back?”
“No.”
“Where were they?”
“I had copies on a flash drive.”
Daniel almost smiled from disbelief.
“A flash drive.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds like a bad television show.”
“It was 2022, Daniel. People still used flash drives.”
Rachel coughed into her hand.
Daniel looked at her.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Claire’s mouth twitched.
For one absurd second, Daniel remembered how often Claire used to laugh when he was angry about minor things. Not at him exactly. At the performance of him.
Then the memory became cruel.
“Where was the drive?”
“In the lining of Benny.”
Daniel looked down.
The bear rested under Lily’s arm.
Rachel stopped leaning against the door.
Claire said, “Not that Benny.”
Daniel stared.
“We had two.”
May you like
He knew that.
Of course he knew that.
