Chapter 4: What She Had Ready
"What are you talking about?" Mark said.
Diane smoothed the front of her coat with both hands.
The gesture was unhurried.
Practiced.
"I'm talking about a signed psychiatric evaluation.
Dated five months ago." She looked at Lucy.
"Voluntary commitment paperwork.
Your signature.
Two witnesses.
A licensed clinician's assessment."
Lucy's stomach dropped.
"I never signed anything like that."
"The notary would disagree."
"I was tied up in your freezer."
"The paperwork says you walked in of your own accord and expressed a desire to withdraw from your family and former life." Diane tilted her head.
"Stress-induced dissociative episode.
It's quite detailed."
Mark picked up his phone again.
"Put it down," Diane said.
"I'm not threatening you.
I'm telling you what my attorney will file the moment I'm taken out of this building.
And once that filing exists, everything Lucy says becomes a question of her mental state at the time." She paused.
"It's not a threat.
It's a fact."
"You forged commitment papers," Mark said.
"I had them prepared.
There's a difference."
"There isn't."
"Mark." Her voice softened.
"I know this looks terrible.
I know what you're feeling right now.
But think about what a trial does to Jack.
Think about what he sits through.
Think about what he hears about his mother, about me, about you." She looked at the boy.
"He's twelve.
Do you want him on a witness stand?"
Jack spoke before Mark could.
"I already called someone," he said.
Both adults turned.
Jack held up his phone.
The screen showed an active call.
The timer read six minutes, forty seconds.
"I called my teacher," he said.
"Mr.
Okafor.
He's been listening this whole time."
Diane's calm cracked.
Just slightly.
A tightening around the eyes.
"That's not—"
"He's recording it," Jack said.
"He told me to keep her talking.
He said that was the right thing to do."
A voice came through the phone speaker, steady and clear.
"Jack, the police are two minutes out.
Keep everyone where they are."
Diane looked at the phone.
Then at Mark.
Then at Lucy.
The second document she'd mentioned — the psychiatric paperwork — was in her bag.
Mark could see her calculating whether to reach for it.
He moved to the door and stood in front of it.
"Don't," he said.
She didn't reach for the bag.
She looked at the floor instead, and for the first time since the freezer opened, she said nothing.
Lucy let go of Jack long enough to take the document from the prep table.
She folded it carefully and held it against her chest with both hands.
"How long?" she asked.
Diane looked up.
"How long were you planning to keep me in there?"
Silence.
"Was there an end?
Did you have a date?
Or were you just going to—" Lucy stopped.
Started again.
"Was I supposed to come out eventually, or was I just supposed to disappear?"
Diane looked at her for a long moment.
"You were supposed to stop being a problem," she said.
The back door opened.
Two officers stepped in, hands at their belts, eyes moving across the room — the open freezer, the rope on the floor, the tape, the woman in the heavy coat still trembling, the boy with the phone, the man standing in front of the exit.
One officer looked at Lucy.
"Ma'am.
Are you injured?"
"I need a hospital," Lucy said.
"But I'm standing."
The officer nodded and moved toward Diane.
Diane put her hands up before he reached her.
She turned to face the wall without being asked.
Like she'd rehearsed it.
The second officer crouched beside the rope on the floor and photographed it without touching it.
Jack watched everything.
He didn't cry.
He held his phone up until Mr.
Okafor told him he could put it down, and then he walked to his mother and stood next to her and didn't move.
Lucy put her arm around him.
Outside, through the kitchen's small high window, the red and blue lights had started.
But as the first officer reached for his handcuffs, Diane turned her head.
"Mark," she said.
He looked at her.
"The restaurant is in your name.
May you like
All of it." A pause.
"I made sure of that six months ago."
