Chapter 6
Grace woke asking for me.
Brooke called while I was still in Queens.
“She’s calm,” Brooke said, which meant she was anything but. “But she keeps checking the hallway.”
“I’m coming.”
“Mrs. Whitaker,” Brooke said softly, “she saved you half her toast.”
I closed my eyes.
My granddaughter had known me less than twenty-four hours and was already afraid food might run out.
“I’ll be there soon.”
When I returned to the hotel, Grace was sitting on the floor beside the bed.
Not on the bed.
Beside it.
The toast sat wrapped in a napkin on the nightstand.
“For you,” she said.
I sat on the floor across from her.
“Thank you.”
She watched me take a bite.
Only then did her shoulders lower.
“Did you find Mom?”
My throat closed.
Helen stood in the doorway.
Brooke looked away.
I had promised truth.
Not every detail.
But truth.
“Yes,” I said.
Grace’s eyes filled instantly.
“She didn’t wake up?”
I shook my head.
A sound came out of her that no child should ever make.
I opened my arms, but I did not grab her.
She crawled into my lap slowly, like grief had made her older than six.
I held her while she cried into my white dress.
“She said she was just tired,” Grace sobbed.
“I know.”
“She said if she slept too long, I had to take the bag.”
“You did.”
“She said you would know what to do.”
I kissed her hair.
“I’m going to learn fast.”
That afternoon, Helen filed emergency motions.
Detective Monroe opened a full investigation into Lily’s abduction, unlawful confinement, fraud, and possible murder.
The medical examiner had not ruled yet, but Lily’s notebook mentioned medicine.
Don’t trust medicine.
That was enough to freeze my blood.
Grant made his next move before sunset.
He went on television.
Again.
This time, he sat beside my mother-in-law, Vivian Whitaker.
Charles’s mother.
Ninety years old.
Elegant.
Cruel as a winter window.
She had told me seven years ago that Lily’s disappearance was “God’s answer to a daughter who forgot discipline.”
I had been too broken then to hate her properly.
Now I was ready.
Grant told the interviewer I was being manipulated by criminals using a child.
Vivian dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and said, “My granddaughter Lily was deeply troubled. Evelyn never accepted that.”
Grace watched from the doorway before I could turn it off.
“She’s the old lady,” she whispered.
I turned.
“What old lady?”
Grace pointed at Vivian.
“She came once. When Mom was sick.”
My body went cold.
“When?”
Grace hugged herself.
“Last year. She said Mom made everyone suffer by staying alive.”
Helen stepped forward.
“Grace, did your mother write that down?”
Grace nodded.
“In the red book.”
“What red book?”
“Frank took it.”
Detective Monroe was called back immediately.
Grace gave her statement slowly.
With breaks.
With hot chocolate.
With her hand in mine.
She told us Vivian came with Grant.
She told us they argued with Lily about Michael Reyes.
She told us Vivian said, “If the man is alive, the child becomes a lawsuit.”
The child.
Grace.
Not granddaughter.
Not person.
Lawsuit.
Detective Monroe asked, “Do you know where Frank took the red book?”
Grace nodded.
“The church basement.”
Everyone stopped.
“What church?” Helen asked.
Grace looked at me.
“The one with blue windows. Mom said safe people hide things where guilty people pretend to pray.”
That sounded exactly like Lily.
Detective Monroe found the church in Brooklyn.
St. Anne’s.
The priest remembered Rosa Delgado, the woman who sometimes brought Grace for soup.
Rosa.
Another name Grace had mentioned in sleep.
In the church basement, behind a loose brick near the boiler room, police found the red book.
Inside were dates, names, and one photograph.
Michael Reyes.
Alive.
Standing beside Lily and Grace outside a clinic.
The date on the back was two years after his reported death.
Helen stared at it.
“If Michael is alive, he may be the only adult witness besides Lily.”
Detective Monroe nodded.
“And if Grant made him disappear, he may still be hidden.”
Grace tugged my sleeve.
“Grandma?”
May you like
“Yes?”
“Mom said Daddy was behind the green door.”
