Chapter 14: Make Sure She Runs

Shelby took us to the cupboard under the stairs.

She pushed aside my mother's old vacuum and pulled up a square of loose floorboard.

Under it was a flat gray flash drive in a sandwich bag.

"I hid it the week I found it," she said. "I thought I might need it someday."

"For what?"

"For the day I got brave."

Laurence went out to the car in the rain and came back with his laptop under his coat.

He set it on the kitchen table and plugged in the drive.

There were two files.

The first was named for a date seven years old, and the second had no name, only a time stamp from the night after.

"Play the first," I said.

The picture opened on a long carpeted corridor with a vase of white lilies in the foreground.

The clock in the corner read 2:41 p.m.

A woman in a navy dress walked into the frame with a hand on a girl's elbow.

I knew the navy dress.

I knew the girl too, in a pale pink sheath, twenty years old and crying a little.

"That's me," Shelby whispered.

On the screen, Marlene steered her to a door at the end of the hall and talked to her for a moment.

Shelby went in.

Marlene closed the door behind her, then opened it again.

She took a rubber wedge from her handbag and kicked it under the edge, and the door stood open a hand's width.

My stomach turned over.

Laurence's hand found mine on the table.

At 2:50 Marlene went up a staircase out of the frame.

The corridor stayed empty for four minutes.

Then the girl I had been came down the stairs.

I was twenty-one and wearing the dress and the veil, and I was smiling.

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