Chapter 5: Claire's Version of the Story
Claire's voice was steady, but I could hear something underneath it — the particular flatness of someone who had rehearsed staying calm about a thing that still wasn't calm at all.
"How did you get my number?" I asked.
"Pauline called me five minutes ago," she said.
"She told me what you found.
I've been sitting here ever since trying to decide what to say first."
"Start wherever you need to."
She took a breath.
"When I was with Daniel, I thought I was going crazy.
I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me.
I started writing things down — conversations I'd had, where I'd had them, who was in the room — because I needed to prove to myself that I wasn't imagining the pattern.
I have a notebook.
I've kept it for two years."
"What kind of pattern?"
"Dorothy knowing things," Claire said.
"Specific things.
A fight I had with my mother over the phone while Daniel was at work.
A conversation I had with my gynecologist about going off birth control.
A comment I made to myself out loud when I was alone in their apartment — just a throwaway thing, something like 'I don't know if I can do this forever.' Daniel brought it up three days later.
Told me his mother was worried I wasn't fully committed."
"She used the same word with me," I said.
"Committed."
Silence on the line.
"Where was the device in your case?" I asked.
"I never found one," Claire said.
"That's the thing.
I looked.
After we broke up I went back through everything in my head and I couldn't identify it.
I didn't know what I was looking for.
I just knew something was wrong."
"It was probably in something she gave you," I said.
"Did Dorothy ever give you a gift?
Something decorative?
Something for the apartment?"
A long pause.
"There was a picture frame," Claire said slowly.
"She gave it to us about three months in.
Said it was a family heirloom.
I put it on the bookshelf in the living room." Another pause.
"I threw it away when we broke up.
I was angry.
I just — I threw a lot of things away."
"The evidence went with it."
"Yes." Her voice tightened.
"I've thought about that every day since Pauline called me."
I looked across the kitchen at Pauline, who was leaning against the counter listening.
She gave me a small nod.
"Claire, I still have my device," I said.
"I haven't touched it since I picked it up off the floor.
I put it in a plastic bag.
If there's a way to trace it — manufacturer, serial number, purchase records — it might connect back to Dorothy."
"Have you talked to a lawyer yet?"
"My sister is calling one tonight."
"Good." Claire's voice shifted slightly.
Firmer.
"Christine, I want you to know something.
When I left Daniel, Dorothy called me.
Once.
She said that I had never been right for him, that she had always known it, and that I should be grateful she'd helped him see it before things went further."
"She admitted it to you directly."
"Not in so many words.
But close enough.
I was so shocked I didn't record it.
I didn't think to." A short, hard exhale.
"I was twenty-six and I thought I was the crazy one.
I didn't know you were allowed to record a phone call in this state."
"You are," I said.
"Two-party consent doesn't apply when you're one of the parties."
"I know that now." A pause.
"Do you think she'll call you?"
I thought about Dorothy's voice on the phone earlier.
The complete absence of defensiveness.
*I was wondering when you'd finally find it.*
"She already did," I said.
"She told me she put it there herself.
On the phone.
With me listening."
Claire went quiet for a moment.
"Christine," she said carefully.
"Please tell me you recorded that call."
I looked down at my phone.
I thought about the moment I'd dialed Dorothy's number.
I thought about the small red icon I always kept in my quick-access bar — the one my friend at work had told me to download after a bad situation with a landlord two years ago.
I had opened it before I dialed.
Out of habit, or instinct, or something I couldn't fully name.
"Yes," I said.
"I recorded it."
The sound Claire made wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite a sob.
"Then you have her," Claire said.
"You actually have her."
My hand tightened around the phone.
May you like
"We have her," I said.
"I'm going to need your notebook."
