Chapter 7: Before Nora
I read the message twice.
Claire's hand was still on the table.
She had pulled it back from mine.
"The one before Nora," she said.
"I don't know what that means."
"Neither do I." She looked at the unknown number on her screen.
"But someone does."
Officer Reyes came into the kitchen.
She had heard — the room was small and the door had been open.
She photographed the message without being asked, then called it in while Harlow stepped out to the porch.
I sat with the words.
*The one before Nora.*
I had been the oldest.
Then Nora.
Then — nothing.
That was the family.
That was what I had always been told.
But I had also been told Nora was d*ad.
Marcus came and stood in the doorway.
I looked at him.
"We need to go back to my parents," I said.
"The visit is over," Officer Reyes said from across the room, her phone still at her ear.
"They've been formally—" She paused, listening.
Her expression shifted.
"Hold on." She lowered the phone.
"They've been formally charged as of an hour ago.
Your father, your mother, and Vanessa.
Child endangerment, unlawful administration of a controlled substance, conspiracy, and — as of this morning — charges related to the illegal transfer of a minor."
"Nora," Claire said.
"Yes."
"What about the one before Nora?" I asked.
Officer Reyes looked at me carefully.
"That's what I need to speak to you about." She pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.
"When we went further back through the records — the way you asked us to — we found something."
She opened her folder.
"Your parents had a child before you.
A boy.
Born four years before you were.
The records show he lived with your family for approximately eighteen months."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"His name," she said, "was Thomas."
I had never heard that name.
Not once.
Not in thirty years of family dinners and holiday photographs and long Sunday afternoons in that house.
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"We don't know yet.
The trail goes cold in the same way Nora's did.
No d*ath certificate.
No hospital record after a certain point.
Just — absence."
Marcus sat down beside me.
"So there were three of us," I said.
"Thomas.
Me.
Nora.
And they kept me."
"Yes."
"Why did they keep me?"
Officer Reyes didn't answer.
I already knew, somewhere underneath the question, that I wasn't going to like the answer.
That it would have something to do with usefulness.
With what a child could provide.
With what I had given them over the years — my compliance, my silence, my willingness to explain away every wrong thing they had ever done.
Claire spoke quietly from across the table.
"They kept you because you were useful to them."
I looked at her.
"I'm not saying it to be cruel," she said.
"I'm saying it because I've been thinking about it since you walked in.
They sold the ones they couldn't use.
They kept the one who would stay."
I thought about the bedroom door that locked from the outside.
The summer at my aunt's house.
The photograph album with pages torn out.
"I stayed," I said.
"You stayed," she said.
"Until now."
Marcus reached over and took my hand.
I looked at Officer Reyes.
"Find Thomas."
"We're already looking."
"Find him before my parents find a way to make the trail colder."
She nodded.
"There's one more thing.
Vanessa — she's asking to make a statement.
Her lawyer contacted us this morning.
She says she has information she's willing to trade."
"About what?"
"About where the money went.
And about a third party who was involved in all three transfers." Officer Reyes paused.
"Someone who is still alive.
Someone who has never been questioned."
I looked at the unknown number still on Claire's phone screen.
*Ask them what happened to the one before Nora.*
Someone had sent that message.
Someone who knew.
Someone who had been watching this unfold and had chosen this moment — not before, not years ago, but now — to push us one step further.
"Who sent that text?" I asked.
Officer Reyes looked at her notepad.
May you like
"The number traces to a prepaid phone purchased three days ago." She looked up.
"Two days after Lily was admitted to the hospital."
