Chapter 4: What the Letter Said
I read the letter three times.
The first time, I couldn't take in the words.
They slid past me like water over glass.
I saw Teresa's handwriting — the looping T, the way she always pressed too hard on the pen — and my brain refused to process anything beyond *she wrote this, she was alive when she wrote this.*
The second time, I read it out loud.
I don't know why.
Maybe because I needed to hear the words in the room, needed them to be real in the way that spoken things are real.
Diane sat across from me and didn't move.
*Mom.
If you're reading this, then Diane found you.
And if Diane found you, then I'm running out of time.
I need you to listen to everything she tells you.
I need you to believe her even when it sounds impossible.
Because all of it is true.*
*I didn't d*e in the mudslide.
I was pulled out of the water by a man named Roy Callahan.
I didn't know who he was then.
I was sixteen and I was terrified and I thought he was saving me.*
*He wasn't saving me.*
*Roy Callahan was the father of one of the boys in the car.
His son Marcus survived the crash.
But Marcus had been driving.
He'd been drinking.
Roy found out before the rescue teams arrived.
He pulled me out of the water before anyone could see — and then he told me that if I ever went home, if I ever told anyone what I'd seen, he would make sure my mother paid for it.*
*I was sixteen years old and I believed him.*
*I've been living under a different name for twenty years.
Roy has people.
I don't know how many.
Every time I've tried to surface, every time I've gotten close to coming home, something happens.
A warning.
A message.
Once, a man sat outside your house for three days, Mom.
I was watching from a car down the street.
I couldn't get to you.*
*I sent the dress because I thought it was the one thing Roy's people wouldn't understand.
They don't know about the pearls.
They don't know what the dress means.*
*Diane is the only person I trust.
She doesn't know everything.
But she knows enough to get you to safety.*
*Please, Mom.
Don't go to the police yet.
Roy has connections.
I'll explain everything when I see you.*
*I love you.
I have always loved you.
I am so sorry it took this long.*
*— Teresa*
I set the letter down on the table.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Roy Callahan," I said.
"Yes," Diane said.
"I know that name." I looked up at her.
"His son Marcus.
He was one of the two who survived.
He testified at the inquest.
He said Teresa was swept away before anyone could reach her."
"He lied," Diane said.
"They both lied."
"For twenty years."
"Yes."
I stood up.
I didn't know what I was going to do — get more tea, open a window, walk out the front door and keep walking.
My body needed to move.
I went to the kitchen window and looked out at the garden.
The roses I'd planted the spring after the funeral.
Teresa had never seen them.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Where is Teresa right now?"
"I don't know exactly," Diane said.
"She moves.
She doesn't stay anywhere long enough for them to track her."
"How do you two know each other?"
"We worked together.
A diner in Ohio, about six years ago.
She didn't tell me who she really was for almost two years." Diane paused.
"When she finally did, I didn't believe her at first.
I thought she was confused, or sick.
But she had proof.
She'd been collecting it for years."
I turned from the window.
"What kind of proof?"
"Documents.
Photographs.
A recording." Diane reached into her bag again and set a small USB drive on the table beside the photograph.
"She gave me this before I came here.
She said you'd know what to do with it."
I stared at the drive.
"She said you'd know who to trust," Diane added.
"That you'd know someone outside the local system."
I thought of my brother-in-law, Frank.
Retired federal prosecutor.
Teresa had adored him.
She used to call him Uncle Honest because he'd once made her return a library book she'd found on the street, insisting it belonged to someone.
"Has anyone followed you here?" I asked.
"Today.
Did anyone follow you?"
Diane's expression shifted.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
"I don't think so," she said.
"But Teresa warned me to check twice."
"Did you?"
A pause that lasted one second too long.
"I checked once," she said.
I crossed to the kitchen window and looked out at the street.
A dark blue sedan was parked two houses down.
It hadn't been there when Diane arrived.
I was certain of that because I always noticed the cars on this street.
Twenty years of watching for something I couldn't name had made me careful that way.
The sedan's engine was off.
But someone was sitting in the driver's seat.
May you like
"We need to leave," I said.
"Right now."
