Chapter 3
My sister’s house was twelve miles from the church, but every red light made the drive feel longer. Emma sat behind me with her coat hood pulled over her head, clutching the stuffed rabbit she’d brought to the funeral. I kept checking the rearview mirror—not because I saw anyone following, I told myself, but because I couldn’t stop looking.
Beth opened her front door before I reached the steps. She took one look at my face and wrapped us both in her arms.
“You’re safe here,” she said.
I wanted to believe her. Then I heard the camera shutters.
Two reporters stood near the curb. A third waited beside a dark van, phone raised. One called my name. Another shouted a question about whether I’d accused my mother-in-law of poisoning my children.
Emma pressed against my side.
“Inside,” Beth said, her voice suddenly hard.
She steered us through the doorway as the reporters surged closer. The door slammed behind us, cutting off their questions—but not the sound of them calling my name through the glass.
Beth locked the dead bolt. “How did they know you were coming here?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma stared up at me. “Are they mad at us?”
“No, sweetheart.” I smoothed her damp hair. “They’re trying to get a story. You don’t have to talk to them.”
Beth took Emma to the living room and turned on a cartoon at low volume. I stayed in the entryway, watching the front window. One reporter held a phone toward the house as if the right angle might show him what we were saying inside.
My own phone buzzed. A message from a number I didn’t recognize carried a link to a statement posted by the Whitmore family’s public-relations office.
The family is grieving an unimaginable loss. We ask for privacy as we support Trevor Whitmore and his daughter during this difficult time. We are deeply concerned by the increasingly erratic behavior of Claire Whitmore and urge the public to respect the family’s need for peace.
I read it twice. The words were soft enough to sound compassionate, sharp enough to make me look dangerous.
Beth came back into the hall. “They’re making you the problem.”
“My grief is convenient.”
“Claire—”
“I’m fine.” The lie came out too quickly. “I’m just not going to let them keep Emma from me.”
My phone rang. Trevor.
I answered but didn’t say hello.
“I saw the statement,” he said.
“Did you write it?”
“No. My mother’s office did.”
“Did you stop them?”
Silence. I heard the faint rattle of a car over pavement on his end, then a door shut.
“I’ve let her handle the family statements for years,” he said. “She decides what gets said and when. I told myself it was just easier than fighting about it.”
“Easier for whom?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“They’re using this to make you look unstable,” I said. “They’re doing it while Emma is standing in the same room as me.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I should have stopped it before it went out.” His voice tightened. “I’m sorry.”
The apology landed between us, too small for what it was meant to cover. I looked through the window at the reporters. One had moved closer to the porch.
“I can’t take a promise from you right now,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
“Then tell me something useful.”
Another pause. “My mother’s been shaping the story for a long time. I saw it. I didn’t want to see what it meant.”
That was something. Not enough, but something.
“Don’t call Emma with this,” I said. “And don’t tell your mother where we are.”
“I won’t.”
I ended the call before he could add another apology.
Margaret arrived after the reporters had drifted back toward their van. Beth let her in through the kitchen door. Margaret carried the manila envelope under her coat, holding it close even after she’d stepped inside.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw Emma on the rug. “I didn’t mean for your daughter to be caught in this.”
“She was already caught in it.” I kept my voice low. “What did you bring to the church?”
“Copies. A piece of the trail—not the trail itself.”
“Do you know what the rest shows?”
Margaret glanced toward the living room. Emma was watching the cartoon, but her hands were wrapped tightly around her rabbit.
“I know what I was told to file,” Margaret said. “And I know the papers I kept weren’t enough to answer the questions they raised.”
“Then why come back?”
Her fingers curled over the envelope’s edge. “Because I left once. I thought if I stayed quiet, the people who mattered would be safe.”
She looked at Emma, and something in her face gave way.
“I won’t let fear send me away again.”
I studied her. “Is what you brought enough to prove anything?”
“No.” Margaret swallowed. “It’s enough to show you there’s more. There are records Victoria kept out of reach. She guarded them for years.”
The word guarded made the kitchen feel colder.
“Where are they?”
“I can’t tell you that yet.”
“Can’t—or won’t?”
“Can’t safely.” Her voice didn’t rise, but her gaze held mine. “The people who were interested in those papers at the church didn’t come because they were worried about accounting.”
I remembered the security officer’s phone pointed at Emma. “Who sent him?”
“I don’t know.”
I hated that answer. I hated how little we could say with certainty, how every frightened guess seemed to reach for Emma first.
“Then we stop guessing,” I said. “We get her out of here and somewhere with witnesses.”
Beth fetched Emma’s coat. I called the local police station and reported the reporters outside and the family’s security officer photographing my daughter at the church. An officer asked us to come in so they could take a full statement. I wrote down the time and his name. No one promised us anything. I hadn’t asked for a promise.
Rain spattered the windshield as Beth opened the front door to check the sidewalk. The reporters had returned to their van, but one still watched the house through a camera lens.
I buckled Emma into her seat. She looked at me, eyes wide but steady.
“Are we going somewhere safe?”
“We’re going where people can see us,” I said. “And I’m staying with you.”
I pulled away from the curb and took the main road toward the station. At the first intersection, I checked the mirror. A dark sedan was two cars back. It stayed there through the next turn, then the one after that.
I didn’t speed. I didn’t take us home. I followed the route the officer had given me, my hands tight on the wheel while Emma hummed softly to herself in the back seat.
The sedan changed lanes when I did.
At a busy intersection, the light turned red. The sedan rolled closer behind us, its passenger-side taillight split by a crooked crack.
I knew that crack. I’d seen it outside the church while the police were escorting the security officer through the rain.
My mouth went dry.
He had been there when Emma’s face was photographed. Someone had watched us leave. And someone had followed us here.
May you like
The car had been outside the church.
Victoria knew where Emma was staying.
