Chapter 9 - What Mothers Hide
The emergency room smelled of disinfectant and stale coffee. Adrian had three stitches along his ribs. Jonah was being examined for a concussion. A uniformed officer stayed near the doors, and for the first time since the attack Mara's hands began to shake.
Her mother answered on the second ring.
"Mara? It's almost one in the morning."
"Are you getting money from Calder Services?"
Silence.
"Mom. Please don't make me ask twice."
Inez exhaled. "They offered help after your father died. I didn't ask who sent it."
"The payments came from people connected to the fire."
"I knew."
Mara pressed her forehead against the cold vending machine. On the other end, she heard a chair scrape the linoleum in the little kitchen where she'd grown up.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because they said they'd stop paying for Ben's treatment. You remember the winter he couldn't breathe. The nebulizers, the hospital stays. We were drowning."
"I could have worked more."
"You were nineteen, baby. You were already working too much."
The word baby nearly broke her. She remembered Ben sleeping upright after the fire, coughing until he threw up. She remembered believing every sacrifice their family made was for the truth.
"They made me sign a paper," Inez said. "It said I wouldn't discuss the case. I signed it because I thought keeping my son alive mattered more than my pride."
"It did matter," Mara whispered. "But they used you."
"Yes. And I let them."
Adrian stood a few feet away, pretending not to listen. His face looked older under the harsh hospital lights.
"Mom," Mara said, "did Dad ever tell you about a remote switch for the stairwell doors?"
"He told me something else. The night they arrested him, he asked me to save a photograph. He said there was a boy in it who could prove what happened. I burned it because Pike stood outside our front door until I did."
Mara closed her eyes. "A boy?"
"Brown hair. White shirt. He was standing beside a blue Bellamy car. I never knew his name."
May you like
Mara looked up. Adrian had gone utterly still.
"I was there," he said. "I was the boy in the photograph."
