He Laughed While I Was Hit novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Recording

I pulled the sheet up to my chin.

The boy did not look at the sheet.

He looked at my face, at the bruises, and then at the coat on the floor beside the bed.

It was red, the one I had worn into the boardroom.

"You're the lady in the red coat," he said.

Brennan woke all at once and sat up.

"Who's that?"

"Elio," I said.

I did not know how I knew his name.

It was the sweater, and the lock screen, and the way his chin came up, which was his mother's.

"Mamma said to find you." His lip trembled and he pressed it flat. "I walked all night."

Brennan was already out of bed, pulling on his jeans, and crouching in front of the boy.

"Where did you come from, buddy?"

"Nonno's house. By the water." Elio pointed through the window. "Zio Rocco took me there on Friday. Mamma said if I get out, I'm to go around the lake until I see a white dock, and find the lady in the red coat."

Brennan's eyes met mine over his head.

"Aurelio's country place," he said. "Across the lake. It's three miles by the road."

Elio was six years old.

He had walked it in the dark in his pajamas.

I wrapped myself in Brennan's shirt and knelt beside Brennan on the floor.

Elio's feet were scratched and caked with mud.

His hands were freezing.

"I'm Britta," I said. "You did exactly right."

"Mamma said you'd have the phone."

I stared at him.

"She said you'd know what to do with it. She said it's got my birthday." He swallowed. "She said I'm not to tell you the number. But I know it, because it's my birthday. It's the fourteenth of March."

0314.

It was the same number as on the slip of paper in my fist.

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