Chapter 4: Room by Room
The kitchen was clean.
Too clean.
The kind of clean that happens when someone wipes down surfaces that didn't need wiping.
Sarah's ringtone was still playing from somewhere above me.
I took the stairs two at a time.
The sound was coming from our bedroom.
I pushed the door open.
The room was empty.
Sarah's phone was on the nightstand, screen lit, my name showing on the display.
Her handbag was on the chair.
Her keys were on the hook by the door where she always left them.
Nobody packs a bag and forgets their phone, their bag, and their keys.
I turned around.
My mother was in the doorway.
"Start talking," I said.
"Right now.
No more of this."
"I told you what happened."
"Her bag is here.
Her keys are here.
Her phone is here." I picked up the phone and held it out.
"Where did she go without any of these?"
"Maybe she took a walk to clear her head.
Maybe she—"
"Stop." I set the phone down.
"Lily said Sarah fell.
She said you called someone.
I want to know who you called and where my wife is."
My mother stepped into the room.
She closed the door behind her, which was the moment I understood that whatever she was about to say, she didn't want it leaving this room.
"Sarah and I had a disagreement this morning," she said.
"It became heated.
She wasn't feeling well — she'd been up half the night, she told me so herself.
She sat down on the kitchen floor.
She wasn't unconscious, she was just — she needed a moment."
"You called someone."
"I called someone to come and help her.
She didn't want an ambulance.
She said so."
"Who did you call?"
She looked at the window.
"A friend."
"A friend took my wife somewhere and you didn't think to tell me."
"I was going to tell you when you got home.
I didn't want you panicking at work."
"Give me the name."
She folded her hands in front of her.
That gesture — I'd seen it my whole life.
It meant she had decided something and she was waiting for me to exhaust myself against it.
"I need to know that Sarah is safe first," I said.
"Give me a name or an address and I will go get her right now and we can sort the rest of this out later.
But if you don't give me something in the next thirty seconds, I'm calling the police."
Something shifted in her expression.
Not fear exactly.
More like a door closing.
"You don't need to involve anyone else in family business."
"Thirty seconds."
"Daniel—"
"Twenty."
She opened her mouth.
Then her phone buzzed in her hand.
She looked at the screen and her face changed in a way I'd never seen before.
Whatever name was on that screen, it frightened her.
She rejected the call.
I crossed the room and took the phone from her hand before she could stop me.
The name on the screen was not Raymond.
May you like
It was Dr.
Harlan Voss.
