Chapter 5: What Eleanor Knew
I was at the hospital for three hours.
Four stitches, a CT scan, and a form to complete for the domestic violence advocate who came and sat with me while I waited for results.
Her name was Donna.
She had short gray hair and a thermos of coffee she offered to share, and she did not try to fill every silence, which I was grateful for.
"Do you have somewhere safe to go tonight?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"My own home."
She nodded.
"Is there someone who can stay with you?"
I thought about it.
"I'll make a call."
The CT came back clear.
No fracture.
The doctor who reviewed it looked at me with the particular expression medical professionals use when they want to say something that is not strictly within their clinical role.
"You were lucky," he said.
"I know," I said.
He held my gaze for one extra second.
Then he signed the discharge paperwork and left.
Donna walked me to the exit.
Before I got into the cab, she pressed a card into my hand.
"Call that number tomorrow.
Not because you have to.
Just so you have it."
I put it in my coat pocket next to my phone.
The cab took me home.
My condo.
The one they had already assigned a moving date for, already measured for Eleanor's writing desk, already stripped of me in their minds before I had even set down my fork.
I unlocked the door and stood in the entrance for a moment.
Everything was exactly where I had left it.
I called my sister, Diane, and told her what had happened.
There was a long silence on the other end.
Then the sound of her getting up from wherever she was sitting.
"I'm coming," she said.
"Don't argue."
"I'm not arguing."
She arrived forty minutes later with an overnight bag and a look on her face that I recognized from childhood — the look she wore when she had decided something and there was no point discussing it.
She made tea.
She sat across from me at my own table.
She looked at the bandage at my temple and pressed her lips together and said nothing about it, because there was nothing to say that the bandage didn't already say better.
"Tell me everything," she said.
I did.
When I got to Maya and the basement, Diane set down her mug.
"How many women?" she said.
"The detective wouldn't say."
"But more than one."
"Yes."
Diane was quiet for a moment.
"And Eleanor.
You think she knew."
"I don't think.
I know." I wrapped both hands around my own mug.
"The way she looked when Maya said those six words.
It wasn't shock.
It was calculation.
She was already deciding what to do next."
"What can she do?"
"She can call lawyers.
She can coach witnesses.
She can start building a version of tonight that protects her son." I looked at the table.
"She has done it before.
That's what the custody threat tells me.
Charles didn't invent that threat on his own.
That family has a system."
Diane was quiet for a long moment.
"Claire," she said.
"What do you need from me right now?"
I looked up at her.
"I need you to be here when Eleanor calls," I said.
"Because she will call.
Probably tomorrow.
And I need to not be alone when she does."
Diane picked up her mug again.
"I'll be here."
We sat together until past midnight.
The city outside was quiet.
The tea went cold.
Neither of us moved to reheat it.
My phone lit up at 12:47 a.m.
Unknown number.
I looked at it.
Diane looked at it.
I let it ring.
It rang six times.
Then it stopped.
No voicemail.
Diane looked at me across the table.
"Eleanor," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Or Charles," I said.
"Testing to see if I'm awake.
Testing to see if I'm afraid."
May you like
I turned the phone face-down on the table.
"Let them wonder," I said.
