Chapter 7 - SOMETHING WORTH STEALING
Ruby dropped to her knees beside the photograph.
The glass had cracked across Emma’s paper crown.
Tomas remained in the doorway and called the police.
“Don’t touch anything else.”
“They went through her things.”
Ruby’s voice sounded distant.
A cardboard box had been emptied across the bed.
Tiny socks. School pictures. A plastic bracelet from a hospital.
Ruby stared at the mess.
“They went through my child’s things.”
Tomas turned away to finish the call.
For a moment, she thought she might scream.
Instead, she sat on the floor until an officer arrived.
There was little missing that she could identify immediately.
Her laptop.
A folder of medical correspondence.
The old phone would have been gone too, if she hadn’t brought it to the mansion.
When Santiago arrived, Ruby stood beside the broken frame.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“Where?”
“Somewhere that isn’t near your sister.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know who benefits if you disappear.”
She looked at him.
“You get to say that because you have gates.”
The sentence stopped him.
Ruby lifted the photograph carefully.
“I had a chain on my door.”
He glanced around her apartment.
Then he stepped aside so she could pass.
At the mansion, Sophia waited in the front hall.
She saw the picture in Ruby’s arms.
Her hands moved.
Ruby answered.
Santiago watched their conversation without understanding until Sophia turned the tablet toward him.
“Someone hurt her home?”
“Yes.”
Sophia’s expression changed.
Not fear this time.
Anger.
She typed again.
“Then she stays here if she wants.”
Ruby shook her head.
“Sophia—”
The young woman raised one finger.
Wait.
She finished typing.
“You said I get to choose who is in my room. I choose you. You choose where you sleep.”
Ruby pressed her lips together.
For the first time all day, she cried.
Later, Santiago found his sister in the library searching a lower cabinet.
“What do you need?”
She pointed to an old green sketchbook.
He brought it down.
The first pages contained childhood drawings.
Horses. Houses. A lopsided birthday cake.
Then the drawings changed.
A staircase.
A woman holding a bag.
A man beside her.
On the final page, twelve-year-old Sophia had drawn a rectangular object inside a laundry chute.
She tapped it.
Then she typed.
“Mom’s phone.”
Santiago stared at the page.
“Where is it now?”
May you like
Sophia pointed toward the rear hallway.
“Where I dropped it.”
