Chapter 4
We stayed in the hallway of 14 Willow Court until the older man asked whether we wanted to sit down.
His apartment smelled like coffee and furniture polish. A narrow table stood beneath a window overlooking the parking lot, where our rental car looked absurdly clean beside dented sedans and a shopping cart with one broken wheel. Claire sat across from me, still wearing the simple clothes she'd changed into after the church. Her wedding ring caught the gray afternoon light whenever she moved her hand.
I kept the letter flat on the table.
The bus-station receipt had faded almost white, but the date remained visible. Twelve years earlier. I had been seventeen.
The sentence beneath it was written in the same hurried hand as the name on the envelope.
I tried to find you. Place told me you lived.
Under that, Mara had written Daniel Whitaker's name and an address.
Claire's uncle.
The older man introduced himself as Raymond Bell. He'd lived in the building for twenty-six years and remembered Mara because she had kept asking for me long after most people would have stopped.
“Was she living here?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” Raymond glanced at Claire before looking back at me. “She rented the basement room for a while. Mrs. Alvarez owned the place then. Mara cleaned apartments, did laundry, whatever people paid cash for. She wasn't dangerous. Just tired.”
The word landed harder than it should have.
“Why didn't she contact me directly?”
Raymond folded his hands over his stomach. “She said she tried.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It isn't.”
Claire touched the edge of the receipt but didn't pick it up. “What did she say about Daniel?”
Raymond's eyes narrowed with recognition. “Whitaker. That was the man who came around.”
“What man?”
“Tall. Expensive coat. Always drove a dark SUV. He told Mrs. Alvarez Mara was unstable and shouldn't be given information about the boy.”
My chair scraped the floor as I stood.
Claire's face went blank. “Did he say his name?”
“Not to me. Mrs. Alvarez said it was Daniel. She didn't know you were related.”
The room became too small. I heard the refrigerator cycle on, the pipes clicking behind the wall. Twelve years ago, I'd been sitting in a high school library believing my mother had chosen silence. I had built an entire personality around that belief. It had made abandonment easier to explain than uncertainty.
Raymond opened a drawer and removed a thin manila folder.
“Mara left this when she moved out,” he said. “I kept it because she asked me to. She said if Evan ever came, give him everything.”
Inside were two photocopied envelopes, both addressed to me at Graham's house. One had been returned with a red stamp. The other had no stamp at all. The corner had been torn open.
Claire stared at them.
“Daniel got these?” she asked.
“I don't know,” Raymond said. “But he came back twice after Mara left. Asked whether she'd left anything. I told him no.”
I picked up the unmailed envelope. My name looked strange in her handwriting, as if it belonged to a child I had misplaced.
On the back, Mara had written a phone number and crossed it out. Beneath that, another sentence:
I won't come to your school. I won't embarrass you. I only want you to know I didn't forget.
Claire inhaled slowly.
Her phone buzzed on the table. Graham's name appeared on the screen.
Neither of us answered.
A second message followed.
We need to discuss what happened before this gets worse.
I looked at the letters, then at Claire.
“Did he know?” I asked.
She didn't pretend not to understand.
“I don't know,” she said. “But I'm going to find out.”
We left Raymond with his promise to call if Mara contacted him. In the parking lot, Claire stood beside the car and held out her hand.
I gave her the envelope.
She read the message from Graham again. Then she locked her phone and slipped it into her coat pocket.
“Not tonight,” she said.
“What?”
“Not his version first.”
May you like
For the first time since the church steps, I believed she wasn't asking me to wait.
She was choosing where we would begin.
