Chapter 3
I stared at Adrian’s wrist until he pulled down his sleeve.
Helen noticed.
“Can we see the recording again?” she asked the manager.
Adrian stepped toward the screen.
“You can’t identify anyone from that angle.”
“Then you won’t mind us taking another look,” Evelyn said.
The manager replayed it.
The man beside Sarah was Adrian’s height. He held the door open with his left hand. I could not see his face.
“My brother wears that watch,” I whispered.
Adrian looked at me.
“Many people wear silver watches.”
I knew that. I also knew he had flinched before I said anything.
Helen asked the manager to preserve the recording. She wrote down the times and requested footage from every camera along the corridor.
Mrs. Vega arrived while we waited. She was still wearing the blue uniform from her cleaning job. I ran to her so fast I nearly knocked the bag out of her hand.
“I couldn’t find her,” I said.
“You did the right thing coming for help.”
She checked my face and the wet front of my coat. I told her about Evelyn and the water.
Mrs. Vega looked across the room.
“She apologized,” I added.
“I’m glad. We’ll talk about it again later.”
Evelyn came over and introduced herself. Mrs. Vega did not smile.
“Sarah has lived next door to me for nine years,” she said. “If you’ve been searching for her, I wish you’d found our building before tonight.”
“So do I,” Evelyn replied.
The manager returned. One camera near the loading area had been turned away for part of the afternoon because workers were moving equipment. Another showed a dark sedan leaving through the garage at 4:41. The windows were too tinted to see who was inside.
Adrian said, “That could be anyone.”
“It could,” Helen agreed.
She asked to speak to the driver assigned to Adrian that afternoon.
“I drove myself,” he said.
Helen wrote that down too.
Mrs. Vega sat with me while Evelyn and Helen spoke to the manager. She opened her bag and took out my dry socks.
“I guessed your feet would be wet.”
I wanted to cry over a pair of socks. Sarah usually remembered things like that.
“Did Mom tell you where she was going?” I asked.
“She said she hoped to see someone who owed her an answer.”
“About what?”
“She didn’t say. She was worried you’d get your hopes up.”
Evelyn heard the last words.
She came to sit across from us.
“Sarah and I had an argument when she was nineteen,” she said. “She left home. I wrote to her, but the letters came back.”
“Why did you argue?”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
“Her father died. I was frightened and controlling. Sarah wanted to make choices of her own, and I tried to stop her.”
I thought of the way Sarah let me choose my library books even when she thought I would find them too difficult.
“She still keeps a picture of him,” I said.
“Her father?”
I nodded.
Evelyn looked away.
Helen returned with a phone in her hand.
“The police have asked nearby hospitals to check for a woman matching Sarah’s description,” she said. “We’ll keep searching the hotel too.”
I stayed awake in the security office until almost midnight. Then Mrs. Vega took me home while Evelyn promised to call if she heard anything.
I made her repeat the promise twice.
In our apartment, Sarah’s cup was still on the counter. Her sweater hung over the kitchen chair. I kept expecting her to open the door and ask why I was awake.
Mrs. Vega slept on our sofa.
At six in the morning, someone knocked.
It was Helen.
“They found a woman who may be Sarah,” she said.
I grabbed my coat.
“She’s alive?”
“Yes. She’s at a hospital.”
The drive felt longer than every subway ride I had ever taken. Evelyn met us in the lobby. Her face was pale, and she had changed out of her gala dress.
A doctor spoke to us before we went upstairs.
Sarah had been brought in the previous evening after someone found her unconscious near a parking garage several blocks from the hotel. She had a head injury and no identification. She was awake now, but confused and in pain.
I ran ahead when the doctor opened her door.
Sarah lay against white pillows, one side of her face bruised.
“Mom.”
Her eyes opened.
For a moment, she only stared.
Then she held out her arms.
I climbed carefully onto the bed and pressed my face against her shoulder.
“I went to find you.”
“I know, baby.”
Her voice was rough.
Behind me, Evelyn made a soft sound. Sarah saw her over my shoulder.
All the warmth left her face.
“You brought her here?” she asked.
“I came because you were missing,” Evelyn said.
Sarah’s hand tightened around mine.
“I wasn’t there to see you.”
Evelyn stopped.
“Then whom were you meeting?”
May you like
Sarah looked toward the door.
“Adrian.”
