Chapter 5: The Person on the Phone
I found his phone on the kitchen counter the next morning while he was in the shower.
I knew it was wrong.
I did it anyway.
I went to his recent calls.
The number he'd called the night before wasn't saved under a name.
Just ten digits.
I took a photo of the screen with my own phone, put his back exactly where I'd found it, and went upstairs to get dressed.
At school I couldn't focus on anything.
I sat through three classes without hearing a word.
By lunch I was in a bathroom stall with my phone, staring at the number.
I called it.
It rang four times.
I was about to hang up when someone answered.
"I was wondering when you'd call." A woman's voice.
Older.
Calm, like she'd been expecting this.
I gripped the phone tighter.
"Who is this?"
"My name is Ruth," she said.
"I was Lena's roommate.
The year she disappeared."
I sat down on the closed toilet lid.
My legs weren't reliable anymore.
"How did you know I'd call this number?"
"Because your father told me about you," Ruth said.
"He told me you looked like her.
He told me you were smart.
And he told me that if you ever heard anything you weren't supposed to hear, you'd go looking." A pause.
"He knows you very well."
"He's been lying to me," I said.
"He's been lying to my mother."
"He's been protecting you."
"From what?"
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke again, her voice was lower.
"From the man who took Lena," she said.
"Who is still alive.
Who, as of six months ago, we believe knows your father's name and address."
The bathroom around me felt very far away.
"Why?" I managed.
"Why would he know our address?"
"Because your father has been investigating on his own for eighteen years," Ruth said.
"Quietly.
Carefully.
But not carefully enough.
Three months ago, someone broke into the records office where the original case files were stored.
Nothing was taken.
But a folder was opened.
Your father's name was in that folder — he'd submitted a formal inquiry years ago."
"So whoever took Lena—"
"Knows that someone has been looking," Ruth said.
"And has started looking back."
I pressed my back against the stall wall.
"Does my father know you're telling me this?"
"No," she said.
"He'd be furious."
"Then why are you?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Because you deserve to know what you're in the middle of," Ruth said.
"And because I think your father is about to do something that will get him hurt.
He found something last week.
Something new.
He called me, and he sounded — he didn't sound like himself." Her voice tightened.
"He said he finally knew where she was."
The bell rang somewhere outside the bathroom door.
Students moved in the hallway, voices and footsteps.
"Where?" I said.
"Where is she?"
"He wouldn't tell me," Ruth said.
"He said he needed to be sure first.
He said he was going to go and look, and that he'd call me after."
"When was this?"
"Four days ago," Ruth said.
"Has he called you since?"
Silence.
May you like
"No," she said.
"He hasn't."
