Chapter 4: What Claire Said
"Hey." Her voice was warm.
Ordinary.
The voice she used when she was calling from the grocery store to ask if we needed milk.
"I'm about twenty minutes out.
Has Marlene left yet?"
I didn't say anything.
"Daniel?"
"She's gone."
A pause.
Small.
Almost nothing.
"Is everything okay?
You sound—"
"Who is Daniel Forsythe?"
The line went quiet.
Not the quiet of someone thinking.
The quiet of someone who has just heard a name they hoped they would never hear spoken out loud.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"Claire."
"Where did you hear it?"
"From my mother.
From a marriage certificate with your signature on it.
From a photograph of you and a man outside a building four months ago." I kept my voice level.
Lily was still in my lap.
I pressed my hand gently against her back.
"I need you to tell me who he is."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"I'm coming home," she said.
"Don't — please don't do anything until I get there.
Please."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Fifteen minutes.
Just — give me fifteen minutes."
She hung up.
I set the phone on the floor beside me.
Lily had gone very still.
"Is Mom in trouble?" she asked.
"No, sweetheart."
"Are you mad at her?"
I thought about how to answer that.
"I don't know yet."
Lily was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Grandma said Mom was keeping secrets.
She said that's why she had to watch her.
To find out what they were."
"When did Grandma start talking to you about this?"
"A long time ago." Lily picked at a thread on my sleeve.
"She used to ask me things.
Like if Mom got phone calls.
Or if she went out without telling you.
I didn't think it was bad.
I thought she was just worried."
I looked at my daughter's face.
The careful way she was watching me.
"Did Grandma ever ask you to do anything?
Not just answer questions — actually do something?"
Lily hesitated.
"She asked me to take a picture once.
Of Mom's phone.
When it was on the counter."
"Did you?"
A small nod.
Barely there.
"Lily.
That's not your fault.
Do you understand me?
None of this is your fault."
Her face crumpled.
She pressed it into my shoulder and I held her and didn't say anything else.
Claire's key was in the door fourteen minutes later.
She came in and stopped when she saw us on the floor.
Her eyes went to the photographs still scattered nearby.
To the marriage certificate on the coffee table where I'd placed it.
Her face didn't collapse.
She didn't cry.
She looked at everything the way someone looks at a car accident they knew was coming.
Then she looked at me.
"I was going to tell you," she said.
"When?"
She didn't answer that.
"Lily," I said quietly, "can you go to your room for a little while?
Take your tablet."
Lily slid off my lap.
She looked at Claire on her way past.
Claire reached out and touched her hair, and Lily let her, and then she was gone down the hallway.
I stood up.
Claire and I faced each other across the living room with the photographs between us on the floor.
"How long were you married to him?" I said.
"Two years."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it ended badly.
Because I was ashamed of how it ended.
Because by the time I met you I had spent three years trying to forget it existed."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have."
I picked up the photograph.
The one with his hand on her shoulder.
"This was four months ago."
She closed her eyes.
"Yes."
"Why were you meeting him?"
When she opened her eyes, something in them had shifted.
Not guilt.
Something closer to fear.
"Because he found me," she said.
"I didn't go to him.
He found me.
And I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to think—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I handled it.
I thought I had handled it."
"What did he want?"
She looked at the photograph in my hand for a long moment.
"He said if I didn't give him money, he would tell you everything."
The word landed in the room and sat there.
"He was blackmailing you."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
Her hands were very still at her sides.
"Four months."
I set the photograph down.
Outside, a car passed.
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.
Lily's tablet made a small sound from down the hall.
"And my mother," I said.
"Did you know she was watching you?"
"I suspected.
About six weeks ago I noticed a car I didn't recognize near the school.
I didn't know it was connected to Marlene until—" She stopped.
"Until what?"
"Until today.
When Lily called me from the upstairs bathroom and told me Grandma had her in the bedroom and wouldn't let her leave."
My head came up.
"Lily called you?"
"She managed to get her phone out of her pocket.
She only had a few seconds." Claire's voice was steady but her hands had started to shake.
"That's why I kept calling you.
I was already in the car."
I thought about the phone buzzing in my pocket while I stood holding the marriage certificate.
I thought about Lily.
Nine years old.
One hand over her mouth.
The other hand finding her phone in her pocket.
"She called you," I said.
"She called me."
I sat down on the arm of the sofa.
The room felt different than it had five minutes ago.
"Daniel Forsythe," I said.
"Where is he now?"
May you like
Claire's expression shifted into something I hadn't seen on her face before.
"That," she said carefully, "is what I've been trying to figure out."
