Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Never Left
For a second, I couldn’t move.
Hannah was alive.
Her wedding ring hung loose on a chain around her neck.
Lily dropped beside her, and Hannah wrapped one arm around our daughter so hard that Lily let out a small, broken sound.
“I knew,” Lily kept saying. “I knew it was you.”
Hannah buried her face in Lily’s hair.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
Vanessa spoke behind me.
“That woman needs medical help.”
I turned.
She had pulled her arm free from Owen.
Her purse hung open.
“Call an ambulance,” I told him.
“Already doing it.”
Vanessa lowered her voice.
“Daniel, she’s unstable. You don’t understand what’s been happening.”
“You knew she was here?”
“I was trying to handle it quietly.”
I looked around the room.
A narrow mattress.
A plastic water pitcher.
A plate with a dry sandwich.
A lock on the outside of the door.
“Quietly?”
“She showed up threatening us.”
Hannah’s hand tightened over the floorboard.
Vanessa saw it.
Her eyes changed.
I stepped between them.
“Back up.”
“Please don’t make a mistake you can’t undo.”
“That’s enough,” Owen said.
Two guests moved beside him.
Vanessa looked at their faces, measuring the room.
Then she began to cry.
Not loudly.
Just enough.
“I’ve spent three years taking care of this family.”
Hannah gave a short, painful laugh.
“You’ve spent three years making sure I couldn’t.”
I knelt beside her.
Up close, I could see the marks where tape had irritated her skin.
Her lips were cracked.
I wanted to touch her face.
I didn’t know if I had the right.
“What happened?”
“Later.”
She lifted the board.
Beneath it lay a phone wrapped in a dish towel.
“Take it.”
Vanessa moved.
Owen blocked her.
“Don’t,” he said.
I slipped the phone into my jacket.
Hannah grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t unlock it where she can see.”
Sirens sounded outside.
Somebody was crying in the ballroom.
Somebody else was asking whether the children should leave.
I heard all of it from a distance.
Three years of funerals without a body.
Three years of telling Lily that people sometimes made choices we couldn’t understand.
Three years of being wrong.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
Hannah looked at Vanessa.
“I did.”
The first police officer came through the crowd.
Vanessa lifted both hands.
“Thank God. I need to explain—”
The phone in my jacket vibrated.
Once.
Then again.
I pulled it out just far enough to see the screen.
A message had arrived.
MOVE HER BEFORE THE TOAST.
May you like
Underneath it was a name I knew.
MARK.
