Chapter 3 - Saint AgnesDaniel drove Emma home because she refused his offer of a security escort but agreed, reluctantly, to a ride. She sat in the back beside Leo, maintaining a careful distance from Daniel and holding the child's favorite toy truck so he could see it.
“What's Saint Agnes?” Daniel asked at a red light.
“A hospital that closed.”
“You didn't ask how I knew that name.”
Emma stared into the wet street. “I used to work there.”
“What did Claire have to do with it?”
“Stop the car.”
He pulled over immediately. Emma's hands were shaking. “I was a nursing assistant. We had patients moved at night with no transfer papers. I complained. They fired me. A week later my brother, Ben, lost his scholarship. That's how people like that make you quiet.”
“People like who?”
Emma opened the door. “I can't say it with your son listening.”
Before she stepped out, Leo caught her fingers. “Don't go, Emmy.”
The nickname landed like a thrown stone. It was what Claire used to call her childhood friend in bedtime stories. Daniel had never known that friend's last name.
Emma bent close. “I'll see you again, buddy. Promise.”
In the car, the lights from passing stores traveled across Leo's face in slow bands. Daniel wished he could rewind the last year and notice every sign he'd overlooked. Instead he checked the rearview mirror, made sure his son was safely buckled in, and asked whether the air was too cold.
Daniel wanted to believe her. But promises were the last thing he trusted.
At home his mother-in-law, Vivian Hale, waited in the foyer. She had moved in after Claire vanished, installed cameras, and taken charge of Leo's appointments. Tonight she eyed the child's milk mustache with distaste.
“You let a stranger touch him?” she asked.
“A waitress helped him calm down.”
“Claire would have hated that.”
“Don't tell me what Claire would have hated.”
Vivian's perfect smile thinned. “The therapist says routine matters. No surprises.”
Leo slipped behind Daniel's leg.
Much later, Daniel passed the nursery and heard Vivian on her phone. “He said the name?” she hissed. “Then we have less time than we thought.”
He stepped into view. Vivian snapped the call off.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Your imagination is getting worse.”
Behind her, Leo was drawing on the back of an old coloring sheet: a square door, colored bright blue, with three figures standing behind it.
May you like
One figure had a red X across its face.
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