Chapter 3 - Her Own Name
Laura called the bank from the driveway.
Marcos stood behind the glass doors, watching.
She turned her face away from him.
“I didn’t request that transfer.”
The representative asked security questions.
Laura answered every one.
Her first street.
Her mother’s maiden name.
The name of the school where she had met Marcos.
Each answer reminded her how much of her life he knew.
How easily love had become access.
“The request is pending,” the woman said. “I can place a restriction while we review it.”
“Please do.”
“Does anyone else know your login information?”
Laura looked toward the house.
“Yes.”
She changed what she could from the phone.
Then she drove to her older sister’s apartment.
Elena opened the door, took one look at her, and moved aside.
“What happened?”
Laura tried to explain.
The pool.
Valeria.
The wheelchair.
The words came out in the wrong order.
Elena listened without interrupting.
When Laura finally stopped, her sister asked only one question.
“Did he hurt you?”
Laura stared at the red mark where the purse strap had pressed into her shoulder.
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
Elena pulled out a kitchen chair.
“Then sit down. We’ll start there.”
At seven that evening, Marcos began calling.
At seven fifteen, his mother called.
At seven twenty, a cousin texted.
You should be grateful he’s recovering.
Laura put her phone facedown.
“He got to them first.”
“He had more practice,” Elena said.
Then the messages changed.
Marcos wrote that she was confused.
That she had been under pressure.
That she had misunderstood a private rehabilitation session.
He attached a photograph of himself in the wheelchair.
Taken beside the pool.
The broken bottle had been cleared away.
Laura felt cold.
“He’s already rebuilding it.”
Elena leaned over her shoulder.
“Then we keep what he can’t rebuild.”
They copied the video.
Saved the bank alert.
Photographed the mark on her shoulder.
Then Laura opened Dr. Herrera’s message.
There was an attachment she hadn’t noticed before.
A short letter on the stationery of his medical practice.
Laura read the first paragraph twice.
I arranged for this message to be delivered if I became unable to speak with you myself.
Her mouth went dry.
Below it was one sentence.
I believed your husband when he said you already knew.
Elena sat beside her.
“Knew what?”
Laura scrolled.
The last line contained an address for a law office and the name of a woman.
Nora Bennett.
May you like
Underneath, Dr. Herrera had written:
She has instructions to give you the envelope in my safe.
