Chapter 6: The Photograph and the Man She Didn't Know
"Where did you get this?" Thomas said.
"Her phone," Lily said.
"She left it on the kitchen table.
I wasn't trying to look.
It was just there and the screen was on."
"You printed this?"
"Dolores helped me." Lily glanced toward the corner.
"I asked her to."
Thomas looked at Dolores.
"Three weeks ago," Dolores said.
"The same day she gave me the drawing.
I didn't know what it meant.
But she asked me, and I — " A pause.
"She was so certain it mattered.
I didn't want to be the one who decided it didn't."
Thomas looked at the photograph again.
The man across from Renata was somewhere in his fifties, well-dressed, with the particular ease of someone accustomed to expensive restaurants.
The folder between them had papers in it — he could see columns, numbers, what might have been a letterhead — but the resolution wasn't sharp enough to read anything.
"Have you ever seen this man?" he asked Lily.
She shook her head.
"Has he ever come to the house?"
"No.
But she talks to him on the phone sometimes.
In her room.
With the door closed."
"How do you know it's the same person?"
Lily looked at him with the patient expression of a child explaining something obvious to an adult.
"She says his name.
Marcus."
Thomas set the photograph on the bed.
He thought about what Renata had said downstairs.
*I kept notes.
Dates, times, what was said.* The attorney.
The brother.
The documented conversations.
She hadn't been building a defense.
She'd been building leverage.
"Dolores," he said.
"Has anyone come to the house while I was at work?
Anyone I wouldn't know about?"
Dolores folded her hands.
"Once.
About six weeks ago.
A man came to the door.
She answered it herself — she saw him coming up the drive and she got to the door before I could.
They spoke on the front step for about ten minutes.
She didn't introduce him.
She didn't invite him in.
After he left she told me he was a contractor looking at the gutters."
"Was he?"
"He didn't look at the gutters."
Thomas stood up from the bed.
"I want you to stay up here tonight," he said to Lily.
"Both of you.
I'll bring dinner up."
"What are you going to do?" Lily said.
"I'm going to make a phone call."
"To who?"
He looked at his daughter — this child who had spent eight months learning to be silent, who had drawn pictures and hidden photographs and pressed her small body against walls — and felt something settle into place inside him.
Not anger.
Something colder and more focused than anger.
"Someone who can help us find out who Marcus is," he said.
He kissed the top of her head.
Went to the door.
Stopped.
"Lily." He turned back.
"The picture book.
The one about the rabbit."
She looked up.
"Your mum bought that," he said.
"Do you remember?"
Something moved across her face.
"She did the voice," Lily said.
"The funny one."
"She did." He held the door frame for a moment.
"I'll do it tonight.
If you want."
She nodded once.
Small and certain.
He went downstairs.
Renata was in the kitchen.
She had made tea — two cups, set on the counter with the careful deliberateness of someone performing normalcy.
She looked up when he entered.
"I thought we could talk," she said.
"Not tonight."
"Thomas, I think if we just — "
"I said not tonight, Renata."
She set down her cup.
"You're going to regret shutting me out."
"Maybe."
"I have been good for this house.
I have been good for her.
Whatever Dolores has told you — "
"Dolores didn't tell me anything I didn't already see." He opened the refrigerator and began taking out what he needed for dinner.
"I'd like you to go to your room."
A long pause.
"You're making a mistake," she said.
"Then it's mine to make."
He heard her set the second cup down on the counter — the one she had made for him.
He heard her footsteps cross the kitchen.
He heard her stop in the doorway.
"His name isn't Marcus," she said.
He didn't turn around.
"His name is Gerald Marsh.
He's a solicitor.
And he's been holding a document for me for the past four months." Her voice was perfectly even.
"A document you signed, Thomas.
In this house.
In this kitchen.
On a Tuesday afternoon in February, when you were tired and I put three pages in front of you with a stack of other things you needed to sign."
The refrigerator was still open.
Cold air moved against his hands.
"I'd think carefully," she said, "before you make that phone call."
Her footsteps moved away down the hall.
May you like
Thomas stood at the open refrigerator for a long moment.
Then he closed it, picked up his phone, and made the call anyway.
