Chapter 16: Chair Three

On Monday morning I went to work, because Burke said hiding would look like guilt.

The parking lot behind the dental office was full.

The waiting room went quiet when I walked in.

Four patients looked up from their phones, and then looked down again too fast.

Behind the front desk, the office manager stood up.

She had known me for six years.

She had brought a casserole to my grandmother's funeral.

"Macy," she said. "The doctor wants you in his office."

"Is it the post?"

"It's about forty thousand people and the post," she said. "Go on."

I walked down the hall past the supply closet and the X-ray room.

The other hygienist, my friend at the next chair, stood in a doorway with her arms crossed.

She grabbed my hand as I passed and squeezed it hard.

"I know you didn't," she whispered.

"Thank you."

"I told the manager so. I told her in front of the printer."

The dentist's office was small and smelled of peppermint.

He sat behind the desk with the post open on his monitor.

Under it, three thousand strangers had written what they thought of me.

"I'm not asking if it's true," he said. "I'm asking what I tell the patients."

"The truth is that I found her."

"Is that what the police say?"

"Detective Harrigan will tell you himself."

"I called him at eight," the dentist said. "He was very polite, and he told me nothing."

Keep reading free with an account. Start A Grave Beneath the Floorboards from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.