Chapter 7: The Woman in the Pictures
By morning, the house had gone quiet in the way a place does after too many people have tried not to make a sound.
Lily slept in Mara’s room, curled around her worn stuffed rabbit. Mara stood at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee she hadn’t touched. I had my phone open to the account where Ryan had posted those smiling pictures with the woman whose face I now knew.
Paige.
She appeared beside him at dinners, under strings of patio lights, in the passenger seat of his car. Ryan’s arm rested around her shoulders. In one photo, he held up a glass while Paige laughed at something outside the frame.
I enlarged the image. Her smile looked easy. I hated that I could imagine believing it meant something.
“Is that her?” Mara asked.
I nodded.
“She messaged you?”
The notification sat at the top of my screen. Paige’s name. No profile picture, just a message request.
I read it again.
Emily, I’m sorry to contact you this way. Ryan told me you left without warning and that you’d been struggling. He said you were unstable around Lily. I didn’t know what to believe. I think we should talk.
A second message appeared beneath it.
Please meet me alone. I can explain.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
“Don’t,” Mara said.
“I’m not going alone.”
“That’s not the only way she can get close to you.”
“I know.”
My answer sounded steadier than I felt. Paige had been in Ryan’s life while he was changing the locks, while I was losing access to our money, while he posted pictures of a new beginning that made me look like the past. Maybe she’d been lied to. Maybe she’d helped him. I couldn’t tell the difference from a profile.
I typed: Public place. Mara comes with me. Send the location and time.
The reply came almost immediately.
A café near the river. Two o’clock. I understand.
Mara read over my shoulder.
“She answers fast.”
“So does someone who’s scared,” I said.
“Or someone who already knows what she wants.”
I put my phone facedown. “Then she can tell me with you sitting beside me.”
At two, we chose a table near the café’s front windows. The security lead had a man outside and another across the street, both dressed like people waiting for someone who was late. Mara kept one hand on her coffee cup and the other close to my wrist.
I watched each person who came through the door.
Paige arrived seven minutes late. She looked younger than she had in the photographs, or maybe the photographs had caught her before she knew she might be part of someone else’s story. Her gaze went first to me, then to Mara.
“You brought her,” she said.
“You asked me to meet alone,” I replied. “I said no.”
Paige pulled out the chair across from us but didn’t sit. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
She glanced toward the windows. For an instant, I thought she might leave. Then she sat down and set a manila envelope on the table.
“I didn’t know he’d followed you here.”
The words struck harder than I expected. Not because they told me anything new, but because she said them like she was already trying to place a border around what she’d done.
“You knew he was looking for us?”
Her lips parted. She looked down at her hands. A pale line circled one finger where a ring had been.
“He told me you’d taken Lily and left him without warning. He said you were acting irrationally. That he was trying to make sure she was safe.”
“And you believed him.”
“I believed some of it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Paige flinched. Mara’s fingers tightened around her cup.
“I’m sorry,” Paige said.
The apology lay between us, light as a napkin and almost as easy to sweep away.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Paige opened the envelope. She drew out a sheet of paper, folded twice, and slid it toward me.
“I printed this before he could ask me to delete it.”
I didn’t touch it.
“What is it?”
“A message from Ryan.”
“Read it.”
She did. Her voice wavered on the second line.
“‘If you see Emily, tell me whether she’s still planning to go to Chicago. Don’t push her. Just find out where she’s headed and let me know. She won’t tell me the truth, but she might tell you.’”
My stomach pulled tight.
Mara’s chair scraped the floor. “You brought her a message proving he wanted you to track Emily?”
Paige looked at me, not Mara. “I didn’t answer that one.”
“Did you answer any others?”
The question seemed to take something from her. Her eyes went glossy, but she didn’t cry. “I sent him a picture.”
My skin went cold.
“What picture?”
“You and Lily. It was on your page. A family photo from before—” She stopped. “He said he needed to know Lily was okay. I thought—”
“You thought he deserved to see us?”
“I thought she deserved her father.”
“You thought a picture would make him feel better?”
“I didn’t think he’d use it to find you.”
The café’s espresso machine hissed behind her. Someone laughed near the counter. Ordinary sounds, almost insulting in their calm.
I looked at the printed message. Ryan’s words were neat and plain. No threat. No confession. Just a request that made my life sound like a route he was entitled to map.
“Did he tell you I was unstable before or after you sent the picture?”
“Before.”
“And that I abandoned him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask why he changed the locks?”
Paige’s face tightened. “He told me you left after a fight. That you’d been planning to go for a while.”
“I was locked out.”
“I know that now.”
“When did you know?”
She looked toward the door again. This time, I followed her glance. A man in a dark coat was crossing the street, hands tucked into his pockets. The security lead outside shifted his stance, and the man kept walking.
Paige’s gaze returned to me.
“After I saw the message about Chicago, I asked Ryan if you knew he was contacting me. He said you were trying to provoke him. He said you’d taken Lily because you wanted to punish him.”
“And you still sent him my picture.”
“I did.” She swallowed. “I told myself I was helping Lily. I wasn’t thinking about what he wanted from you. I was thinking about what he said he wanted.”
It wasn’t a defense. At least she didn’t make it one.
I let the silence stretch until she had to sit inside it.
“Why bring this now?” I asked.
“Because he called this morning. He said I should block you and forget I ever saw that message.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She pressed both hands flat on the table. “Because I heard what happened at Mara’s house.”
My body went rigid.
“Who told you?”
“Ryan.” Her voice broke on his name. “He said he went there to see Lily. He made it sound like you were shutting him out for no reason.”
“He came to the door after midnight.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He left a note threatening me.”
Paige’s face drained of color. “He said you were making him desperate.”
There it was again: Ryan’s version of events, arriving ahead of mine to clear a space for whatever he chose to do next.
I folded the printed message along its old creases.
“You can’t ask me to trust you,” I said.
“I’m not.”
May you like
“Good.”
“I just thought you should know he asked me to watch for you. He asked me to verify where you were going.” She drew a shaky breath. “And when I sent him that picture, I gave him something he could use.”
