Chapter 2 - The Name in Claire's Notebook
I could have ordered Marcus to follow her.
Two years earlier, I would have.
Instead, I stood on the sidewalk while Maya Bennett disappeared between a city bus and a delivery truck.
“Dad,” Sophie said quietly, “please don't get her in trouble.”
I looked down at my daughter. “How long have you been talking to her?”
Sophie stared at the pavement.
“Sophie.”
“Three weeks.”
My pulse jumped. “Three weeks?”
“She sits near the alley after school. Sometimes she reads. Sometimes she helps kids with homework.”
“You've been leaving the gate to meet a stranger?”
“She isn't a stranger to me.”
That sentence hit harder than I expected.
At home, I walked past the dining room, past the family photographs I rarely looked at, and straight into Claire's old study.
I lifted it.
Inside were notebooks from the year before she died.
I used to tease her about speeches like that.
Now I would have given anything to hear one.
I found the black notebook near the bottom.
Page after page held names, phone numbers, donation ideas, school notes.
Then I saw it.
Maya Bennett - brilliant at math. Mom deceased. Father gone. Temporary housing unstable. Lakeview candidate. DO NOT LET THEM DROP HER.
The words were underlined twice.
My hands went cold.
Sophie stood in the doorway behind me.
“Mom knew her?”
“It looks that way.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
She came closer. “Why not?”
I had no answer that made me look like the father or husband I wanted to believe I had been.
My phone rang.
Lakeview Headmaster Charles Whitmore.
I answered immediately.
“Daniel,” he said, too warmly. “I heard there was an incident near campus today involving Sophie and a former student.”
“Former student?”
A pause.
“Yes. Maya Bennett. I'm afraid she's troubled.”
“What happened to her scholarship?”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“I'm not sure what you've been told, but Maya was removed for theft and serious misconduct.”
Sophie gasped beside me.
Whitmore lowered his voice.
“Daniel, for your daughter's safety, I strongly recommend you keep Sophie away from that girl.”
I looked again at Claire's handwriting.
DO NOT LET THEM DROP HER.
May you like
Then Whitmore said the sentence that changed the entire conversation.
“And if Maya has any documents with Lakeview's name on them, I need you to return them immediately.”
