She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Car Tapes

The chief instructor slid the latch across the infirmary door before he touched the pink phone again.

"What you will hear was recorded in a parked car," he said. "The woman in it thought she was alone."

He set the phone on the cot beside Sabina's knee and turned the volume up.

First came the tick of an engine cooling.

"Monday, dawn," Sabina said hoarsely. "I numbered them. That's the first one."

Then Marilyn's voice came out of the speaker, low and steady.

"Abigail."

There was a long pause, and the tick of the engine went on under it.

"She has my mother's hands."

Albert made a sound in his throat.

I held the tin against my stomach with both arms.

"Next," the chief said.

"Wednesday," Sabina said. "Right after the candy."

Out of the speaker came the wind of the field, far off, and Sabina's own sweet voice saying two lemon drops.

Over it, close to the microphone, a metal handle clicked.

A hinge creaked, and the wind got louder.

"Not yet," Marilyn whispered. "Not yet. Not yet."

The hinge creaked back, and a door thudded shut.

"She opened it," Lottie said from the wall. Her voice had gone thin. "She opened the car door and she shut it again."

"Four hundred people were looking at me," I said. "She had the door open."

Nobody answered me.

The chief played the next one.

It was from that night, and I knew the sound of it before I understood it.

It was my own crying, thin and echoing in the stairwell, and Lottie's voice trying to talk me down.

Marilyn breathed along with it, in the dark of her car.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry."

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Heard Nothing from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.