Chapter 6
Sebastian stared at the photograph until the screen dimmed in his hand.
Audrey handing Catherine a set of car keys.
Three days before Catherine died.
Malcolm’s message sat beneath the image like a blade deliberately placed where Sebastian could not avoid touching it.
Ask your wife where Catherine drove that night.
For fourteen months, Sebastian had imagined every possible version of his sister’s final days. He had imagined Catherine frightened. Angry. Confused. He had imagined Audrey convincing her not to call him. He had imagined betrayal in so many forms that eventually betrayal had become easier to live with than uncertainty.
But he had never imagined Catherine behind the wheel of Audrey’s car.
He looked up.
Audrey had not moved.
The chapel was nearly dark now. Only the amber emergency lights along the walls remained, leaving the stained-glass windows black and colorless. The hospice was quiet beyond the door, the kind of exhausted silence that came only after a building full of frightened people had finally settled.
“Where did she go?” Sebastian asked.
Audrey’s eyes closed for half a second.
When she opened them again, he saw the answer before she spoke.
“I can’t tell you.”
The old Sebastian would have crossed the space between them.
The old Sebastian would have taken the phone records, vehicle records, security footage, every camera between the hospice and the state line. He would have found the destination before sunrise. If Audrey refused to cooperate, he would have gone around her.
He still could.
The thought arrived with terrifying ease.
“You gave her your car,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You knew she was sick.”
“Yes.”
“You knew she had hidden herself from me.”
“Yes.”
“And you gave her a way to disappear again.”
Audrey flinched at the last sentence.
It was small.
Sebastian noticed because he had begun noticing everything about her.
“She wasn’t disappearing from you,” Audrey said.
“Then from whom?”
Her silence became an answer of its own.
Sebastian stood.
Audrey did too.
“You’re protecting someone.”
Her face changed.
Not enough for anyone else to see.
Enough for him.
Sebastian went completely still.
His mind moved quickly through possibilities. Catherine had never been careless with secrets. If Audrey was willing to withstand his anger, marry him, let half the city accuse her of betrayal, and risk the hospice rather than reveal where Catherine had gone, then the destination was not a place.
It was a person.
“Who?” he asked.
Audrey’s voice dropped. “Sebastian.”
“Who was Catherine protecting?”
“I promised her.”
“She’s dead.”
“And promises do not stop mattering because the person who asked for them is gone.”
His jaw hardened.
“That is a convenient principle when the dead cannot object.”
Audrey’s eyes flashed.
“There is nothing convenient about any of this.”
She stepped closer, anger finally breaking through the exhaustion.
“You think I enjoyed watching you stand at her funeral? You think I enjoyed watching you blame yourself because you couldn’t find her? Every time your name came on the television, Catherine turned the screen off because it hurt too much. Every time a black car slowed outside, she watched the window because some part of her wanted it to be you.”
Sebastian’s expression changed.
Audrey stopped, as if she had already said too much.
“What did you just say?”
She looked away.
He moved around the pew until he stood directly in front of her.
“Catherine wanted me to find her?”
Audrey swallowed.
“Some days.”
“And other days?”
“She was terrified you would.”
The sentence landed differently now.
Not accusation.
Contradiction.
Sebastian thought of Catherine’s note.
If Audrey kept her promise, then you still do not understand why I was afraid to come home.
Not afraid of him.
Afraid to come home.
There was a difference.
He had been too angry to see it.
His phone vibrated again.
Another message.
Not Malcolm this time.
Nico.
Sebastian opened it.
We traced the vehicle in the photo. Whitaker’s Volvo. Traffic camera caught it at 9:41 p.m. heading north on Atlantic Avenue. Lost it two blocks later. Want me to pull private cameras?
Sebastian’s thumb hovered over the screen.
All he had to type was yes.
Audrey watched him.
He knew she understood exactly what the message was without seeing it.
Sebastian deleted it.
Then he typed:
No. Stop the search.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
You sure?
Sebastian looked at Audrey.
“No,” he murmured.
Then he typed:
Yes.
He put the phone away.
Audrey stared at him.
“You stopped them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question irritated him.
Perhaps because he did not have an answer that fit the man he had been yesterday.
“Because apparently I’m attempting something new.”
“What?”
“Not destroying everything between me and an answer.”
For several seconds, Audrey simply looked at him.
Then the corner of her mouth moved.
It was not quite a smile.
It was something softer.
That affected him more.
Sebastian turned toward the chapel doors before he could examine why.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“You haven’t eaten since noon.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It was the question I chose to answer.”
Audrey almost smiled again.
They reached the kitchen twenty minutes later. The staff had left soup warming on the stove. Sebastian found two bowls while Audrey sat at the small table near the window.
He placed one in front of her.
She stared at it.
“You served me dinner.”
“Do not make it significant.”
“You carried hospital beds yesterday.”
“I’m aware.”
“You let Luis keep his job.”
“Yes.”
“And now soup.”
Sebastian sat across from her.
“Are you documenting my decline?”
“I’m trying to understand whether you’ve been replaced.”
“Eat.”
Audrey lifted the spoon.
The quiet between them felt strange.
Not comfortable exactly.
But no longer hostile.
Sebastian found himself watching her fingers around the spoon. There was a faint red mark along her palm from pushing equipment earlier. A bruise near her wrist. Exhaustion beneath her eyes.
He had married her because he thought pain was something she owed him.
Now every visible sign of her pain annoyed him for a completely different reason.
A door opened somewhere down the corridor.
Audrey froze.
Sebastian saw it.
Before either spoke, footsteps approached.
Nurse Ramirez appeared carrying a padded overnight envelope.
“This came by courier,” she said. “The driver said it was scheduled for delivery if the property was challenged.”
Audrey slowly stood.
“For me?”
Ramirez shook her head.
“For both of you.”
Sebastian took the envelope.
Across the front, written by hand, were four words.
Sebastian Ror and Audrey Whitaker.
He recognized Catherine’s handwriting instantly.
Audrey gripped the back of the chair.
Sebastian looked at the nurse.
“Who sent it?”
“There’s a law firm listed on the receipt. Halpern and Lowe.”
Audrey’s expression sharpened.
“You know them?” Sebastian asked.
“No.”
He opened the envelope.
Inside were two items.
A brass motel key with a faded plastic tag marked 12.
And a folded sheet of paper.
Sebastian opened it carefully.
Catherine’s handwriting covered only half the page.
If this envelope has been delivered, Malcolm has finally decided patience is less useful than pressure.
Sebastian stopped.
Audrey came around the table.
He continued reading.
Audrey, I’m sorry.
Audrey’s breath caught.
You kept your promise longer than I had any right to ask.
Then:
Sebastian, before you decide what this means, remember something you were terrible at when we were children.
His throat tightened.
Count to ten.
Despite himself, Sebastian almost laughed.
Catherine used to say it whenever he became furious.
He read on.
Room 12. Bellmere Motor Court. Ask for nothing at the desk. The room has already been paid for.
A final sentence sat beneath it.
Go together, or don’t go at all.
Sebastian lowered the page.
Audrey was staring at the motel key.
“What is Bellmere?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He believed her.
That surprised him too.
Within twenty minutes, Nico had confirmed the Bellmere Motor Court still existed. Forty minutes north of Atlantic City, it was an aging roadside motel surrounded by pine trees and abandoned tourist businesses.
Sebastian wanted six men.
Audrey wanted none.
They compromised at two, who followed three minutes behind.
Rain had begun again by the time they left the hospice.
Audrey sat in the passenger seat while Sebastian drove.
He almost never drove himself.
Tonight he did not want anyone else inside the car.
For ten minutes, neither spoke.
Then Audrey said, “Catherine used to talk about you.”
Sebastian’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“What did she say?”
“That you hated tomatoes.”
He glanced at her.
“That’s what you give me?”
“It was the first thing I remembered.”
“I don’t hate tomatoes.”
“She said you removed them from every sandwich.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Audrey looked out the window.
“She said you broke a boy’s nose when you were twelve because he tore her science project.”
“He tore it deliberately.”
“You broke his nose.”
“He learned something.”
Audrey shook her head.
But Sebastian heard the suppressed amusement in her voice.
“She also said you waited outside her bedroom every night for two weeks after your mother died.”
The warmth disappeared.
Sebastian kept his eyes on the highway.
“I was thirteen.”
“She remembered.”
He said nothing.
“She knew you loved her,” Audrey added.
“Then why didn’t she call?”
Audrey turned toward him.
“Because love and safety are not always the same thing.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
That sentence followed them the rest of the way.
The Bellmere Motor Court looked as though nobody had renovated it since the previous century. Half the neon sign was dead. Rainwater ran through cracks in the parking lot. Twelve identical doors faced a narrow covered walkway.
Room 12 was at the end.
Sebastian tried the brass key.
The lock opened.
Inside, the room smelled faintly of dust and closed windows.
There was no bed.
No television.
No furniture except a metal table bolted to the floor.
And on top of it sat a wooden box.
Audrey stopped beside Sebastian.
Neither spoke.
The box contained an old digital recorder, an envelope, and a child’s drawing.
Sebastian reached for the drawing first.
Blue crayon covered most of the page.
A woman with yellow hair stood beside a small boy.
Above them, childish handwriting spelled:
MOMMY + ME
Sebastian’s fingers went numb.
He looked at Audrey.
She had gone completely pale.
“No,” she whispered.
Sebastian turned the paper over.
On the back was a date.
Seven years earlier.
Beneath it, in Catherine’s handwriting:
Oliver, age four.
Sebastian looked at Audrey again.
This time she could not hide the truth.
“What is this?” he asked.
Audrey’s eyes filled.
He had never seen fear on her face like this.
Not even on their wedding night.
“Sebastian…”
His voice dropped.
“My sister had a child?”
May you like
Audrey closed her eyes.
And that was all the answer he needed.
