This Secret Thing, стр. 48

offered more hours and perhaps with “things the way they are,” it’d be best if she took the work. They were reduced to emails now. It was the safest, least emotional way to communicate. Phone calls could escalate; texts were easy to ignore. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but he was powerless to stop it. In order to stop it, he’d have to know if it was Matteo in that bag, and if it was, he’d have to know who put him there. And then he’d have to see that person brought to justice. He knew himself, and he would not be satisfied if the mystery of Matteo’s disappearance had just been solved. One answer would inevitably lead to a whole host of new questions.

He forced himself to focus on the camera, watching as a random bird flitted across its unblinking field of vision once or twice. He glanced up, scanned the scene in front of him again, and contemplated just leaving. But what if he missed something—some piece of evidence, a tip kindly passed on discreetly by a fellow brother-in-arms, a diver finding something significant in the submerged car. Anything could happen.

He looked back down at the camera, hearing the sound of voices—not just one, and not his daughter’s. He watched as two boys appeared. They laughed low and mumbled things to each other as they approached the door, their heads ducked low and away from the camera’s eye like they knew it was there. He wondered where they’d come from. Were they from her school bus? But these two boys looked older than her. The week before, he’d seen her get dropped off by an unfamiliar car, but the windows had been tinted black, and he couldn’t see the face of the driver. He’d called Karen, tried to work it into conversation as to whether Lauren still rode the school bus to and from school. Her voice had gone up an octave when she asked why, in that way that told him he had better tread lightly lest she get suspicious.

“Oh nothing,” he’d said. “I just thought she’d said something about getting a ride because of her piano practice.”

“Lauren isn’t playing piano anymore. It isn’t in the budget,” Karen had said, using that tone that told him this was something he should’ve known, another failure on his part. But instead of getting angry in response, he’d expertly steered the conversation toward finances and away from why he was asking about how Lauren was getting to and from school. He couldn’t afford for his wife to figure out he was monitoring their comings and goings and take away his only means of keeping tabs on the family.

Even if he didn’t live at home anymore, it was his job to look out for them, to protect them at all costs. He looked up at the body bag, now with a stretcher beside it. Then back down at Lauren, standing outside the door, talking to the two thugs. He would bet money that Karen never checked the security camera unless she was home and was looking out for herself, her safety. Though she loved and cared for the children, safeguarding them had always been his jurisdiction.

“Tell them to leave,” he said aloud, as if Lauren could hear him. “Don’t you dare let them into my house.” From the angle they were standing, with their chins dipped low, he still couldn’t see their faces, and he wondered if they were boys from the neighborhood or if she’d met them somewhere else. Strangers. They were strangers, and they were with his little girl while she was home alone. Alone and unprotected.

It was all he could do not to run to his car and speed back to his house. But he kept his cool; took deep, even breaths; and willed his daughter to be as smart as he’d raised her to be. He exhaled loudly when the boys finally said their goodbyes and ambled off down the drive. As Lauren safely entered the house and he heard the click of the lock turning behind her, he exited out of the security app in time to see the body bag hefted onto the stretcher. The attendants began pushing it over rocks and uneven ground up to the ambulance parked several hundred yards away, waiting to take the person—whomever he was—to be identified. Now Nico would wait to see if his questions would be answered, and whether those answers would spark a great many more questions.

Polly

She listened to the message a second time, making sure she had a handle on the situation, keeping the panic at bay a moment longer. This time it wasn’t Calvin calling, but Dwight, her personal banker, letting her know that her husband had been to the bank and would she please call him back because he had “some concerns.” She clutched the phone to her chest, rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if seeking heavenly aid, though she and the Lord had stopped speaking years ago. It was never too late to ask, she thought. She recalled her second husband, Paul Ferry, who had loved God far more than he’d loved her. In the end, it had come between them.

During that marriage, she’d carted Norah to church, well, religiously. Maybe that had done damage to the child, brought them all to this point in time. Norah had known Polly was no church lady, eyeing her with a knowing that made Polly so uncomfortable she had scolded the child. Polly had pretended to be someone she was not so that Paul Ferry would love her. Had this been a message she’d transferred to her daughter? That it’s OK to be duplicitous for the sake of a man?

She’d been a bad mother. That was why she was here; that was why Norah was in jail. In that moment, guilt joined anxiety, a dynamic duo that could take her out completely if given the time. But