Chapter 6: What Carol Knew
Graham answered on speaker without me asking him to.
I think he understood, in that moment, that the time for private conversations was over.
"Carol," he said.
"Graham." Her voice was tight.
Controlled.
The voice of someone who had been rehearsing what to say.
"I'm sorry to call tonight.
I know what tonight is."
"It's all right.
My wife is here with me."
A brief silence.
"Good.
She should hear this."
I moved closer to the phone.
"I've been reading the rest of the letters," Carol said.
"All of them.
I couldn't wait until next week.
I need you to know what's in them."
"Tell us," I said.
Another pause.
When Carol spoke again, her voice had changed.
Softer.
Careful.
"Sandra didn't leave because she wanted to.
She left because she was frightened.
She wrote about it in the letters — not everything, not all at once, but enough that when you read them together, the picture becomes clear." Carol took a breath.
"She was frightened of someone, Graham.
Someone who had been threatening her.
She didn't name them directly in most of the letters, but in the last one — the one from eight months after she left — she did."
Graham's hand tightened around the phone.
"Who?"
"She wrote a name," Carol said.
"And then she wrote that she couldn't come back as long as that person had any connection to Millie's life."
The room felt very small.
"Carol," I said carefully.
"What name did she write?"
The pause that followed lasted long enough that I counted my own heartbeats.
"She wrote yours," Carol said.
"Not yours — I'm sorry, I don't know your name.
She wrote the name of the woman Graham was seeing.
The woman he'd told her about.
The one he said was just a friend."
Graham's face had gone the color of old ash.
"She thought I was a threat," I said slowly.
"She thought I was the reason she had to leave."
"No," Carol said.
"That's not what the letter says." Her voice dropped.
"The letter says that the woman Graham was seeing had told Sandra something.
Something about Graham.
And that whatever she was told — it frightened Sandra badly enough to run."
I looked at Graham.
He was staring at the phone like it had just grown teeth.
"Graham," I said quietly.
"Who was I, three years ago, to Sandra?"
He didn't answer.
"Graham.
When did we meet?"
His mouth opened.
Closed.
"We met four years ago," I said.
"You told me you and Sandra had already separated.
You told me it had been over for months."
The silence in the room was absolute.
"It wasn't over," Carol said softly.
"Not when Sandra left.
She was still there.
She was still trying."
I set my hand flat on the table beside me to keep myself steady.
"What did I tell her, Graham?" My voice was barely above a whisper.
"What did someone tell Sandra that made her run?"
May you like
He finally looked at me.
And I saw, in his face, that he knew exactly what it was.
