Dead Before the Truth Revealed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Seventy-Two Hours

Constance, the family doctor and a weeping Camille arrive at Ciara's apartment with hold papers. Ciara slips out through the laundry room and decides to die, and Edmund hands her the key to the lake house.

At eight the next morning someone knocked on my apartment door with the flat of a hand.

I had not slept. I opened it in yesterday's black dress with the chain still on.

Camille stood in the hallway holding my phone.

"You left it in my clutch," she said. "Oh, Nor, your eyes."

Behind her stood Constance Kensington in a navy suit, and beside Constance a man with a leather bag I knew from the foundation's Christmas party.

He was the family's doctor, and he did not say hello.

"We came to help," Camille said. "Please don't be angry. It's only seventy-two hours of rest."

I took the phone through the gap and thumbed it awake.

The lake photos were gone from my camera roll.

So was my notes file, six years of dates and names from that night.

The deleted folder was empty too.

"You went through my phone," I said.

"I was worried about you."

She pushed her sleeve up to wipe her cheek, and I saw her forearm.

A fresh square of gauze was taped over the scar.

Her scar had faded for six years. Last night under the chandelier it had been bright pink and raised.

"You touched it up," I said quietly. "With what, Cam? What did you use?"

Her eyes flicked to Constance and came back.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Last night it looked new."

"You see what you want to see," Constance said, and she held out a stapled form. "The doctor has signed the evaluation, and I have signed as the family. It's a good facility. Quiet. Anthony is paying."

"Anthony knows about this?"

"He knows you need help."

I read the top line of the paper.

Voluntary or involuntary, it said, and someone had already circled the second word.

"I'm an ER nurse," I said. "I know what seventy-two hours turns into."

"Then you know it's kind," the doctor said, and set his bag on my little kitchen table.

I looked at Camille.

She was crying again, soft and real-looking, and holding my hand through the gap in the door.

"I only want you safe," she said.

My phone buzzed against her fingers.

One text, from a number I had saved years ago and never used.

Service door behind your kitchen. Go now. Don't pack. E.P.

I took my hand out of Camille's.

"Let me get a glass of water," I said. "Then I'll sign."

"Good girl," Constance said.

I shut the door on the chain, walked three steps to the kitchen and lifted my bag and coat from the hook.

Then I opened the back door that nobody ever opened, the one to the stairs where the building kept its mops.

I took the five floors in my socks, with my shoes in my hand.

I could hear Camille calling my name above me, higher and higher.

By the time they were through my front door I was out into the alley.

A grey sedan was idling by the dumpster with its passenger door already open.

Edmund Arrington sat behind the wheel in the same tweed jacket as the night before.

"Get in," he said.

I got in.

He pulled out through the delivery gate before I had the door shut.

"I had a man watching the building," he said. "Constance booked the facility at six this morning. I had the call from the front desk."

"They wiped my phone."

"They will have wiped everything they could reach."

I looked at my hands.

They were shaking, and I made them stop.

At the gala, and again at the door of my own apartment, I had said what was true and been handed to a doctor for it.

If I was a patient, nothing I said would count.

If I was dead, nobody could hand me to anybody.

"Edmund," I said. "You said they'd believe a dead one."

"I did."

"Tell me how a person does that without dying."

He drove a full block before he answered.

"You don't die, Miss Ellingwood. You are found where you were not meant to be, and the finding is done for you. Cutler Lake. A boat, a jacket, a place the family already tells as a tragedy."

"That's where he went through the guardrail."

"That's where everyone will expect a heartbroken woman to go."

He pulled a ring of keys from his coat and put them in my lap.

A brass one for a door. A small silver one for a padlock.

"The Cutler Lake House is mine. Nobody on the Kensington side has ever been inside. The sheriff's deputy there owes me his career, and he will be the one to take your statement, which will be that there is nothing to take."

I closed my hand around the brass key.

"Why are you doing this?"

Edmund watched the road.

"Because six years ago I stood on that shore and said nothing," he said. "I would like to say something now."

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