while doing it.
He raised a finger to his lips.
In his other hand was a phone.
‘Easy, Daniel,’ he said softly.
My body went cold.
‘You sent the messages.’
Cal smiled as if I had guessed a card trick. ‘Some of them.’
Behind him, near the dumpster, a dark van idled without headlights.
I looked back through the glass. Mara was kneeling by a cubby shelf now, tearing through backpacks.
‘What did you do to my house?’
His smile slipped. ‘Your wife did that all by herself when she decided to steal from me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Cal’s eyes sharpened. ‘She makes dresses for lonely rich women. Hears things. Sees things. One of her clients had a husband who moved money for people who don’t like receipts. Mara found names, accounts, recordings. Instead of minding her business, she copied everything.’
The air seemed to thicken.
‘Why?’
‘Because she thought she could sell it.’
‘No.’
The word came out too quickly, like a reflex defending a person I was no longer sure existed.
Cal leaned closer. ‘You really think your little house and your broken dishwasher and your overdue mortgage were enough for her? She wanted out. She wanted money. Then she panicked and tried to hand the drive to police, but she got sentimental. Hid it with the kid.’
I looked through the glass again.
Mara had found Eli’s cubby.
Her shoulders sagged when she pulled out the dinosaur backpack. She opened it, reached inside, and froze.
Even from outside, I could see her face change.
The backpack was empty.
Cal saw it too.
His jaw clenched.
‘Where is it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He lifted the phone. On the screen was a live video call. Eli sat in the police station lobby, Mrs. Holt beside him, unaware she was being watched from some hacked security feed.
‘Then ask your son.’
Rage moved through me so cleanly it almost felt calm.
‘You threatened my child.’
‘I gave him a chance to run,’ Cal said. ‘That makes me nicer than most people in my line of work.’
Inside the school, Mara stood slowly. She was looking toward the glass doors now.
At me.
For one second, across the distance and the reflections of police lights beginning to flicker against the windows, we were husband and wife again. I saw grief in her face. Not innocence. Not exactly. But grief so raw it stripped away every performance.
She mouthed one word.
Sorry.
Then she turned and ran deeper into the school.
Cal cursed and lunged for the door.
I hit him from the side with everything I had.
We crashed into the loading dock wall. Pain exploded through my shoulder. The phone skittered across the pavement. Cal was stronger than he looked, and he drove a fist into my ribs hard enough to empty my lungs.
But I had spent eight years lifting a sleeping child from car seats without waking him, carrying grocery bags and laundry baskets and whole invisible loads of worry. I knew how to hold on.
I grabbed Cal’s jacket and did not let go.
Officers came around the corner shouting.
Cal twisted, reached into his coat, and for one terrible heartbeat I thought of Eli on that couch, waiting for me to come
