Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
There’s really only one option.
I push away from my desk, scoop up the scrap, and shove it in my pocket as I grab my jacket. Outside, I stride to the nearest train and hop on, not bothering to check where it’s headed. It doesn’t matter, anywhere distant will do. The stops speed by. New Yorkers herd on and off like cattle. The power flickers, someone turns their music on too loud, someone else speaks what I think is French into their cell on speakerphone. I ignore it all. Being single-minded, goal-oriented, is what’s gotten me this far. When the twelfth stop comes, I stand and step off as soon as the doors slide open, taking the staircase up to the street. A bodega stands on the corner, and I go in, grab a prepaid cell at random, and slide cash across the counter. Credit cards are traceable.
Only when I’m back outside, in the fresh, warm air of late spring, do I pull out that slip of paper and squint at the numbers. I type them in, hit call, and take a quick look around me. Lots of people are hurrying one place or another, but no one too close, no one listening.
The phone rings twice before a vaguely familiar voice comes on. It’s changed some—deepened over the years. “Hello. You’ve reached Ivy Leighton at the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. If the reason you have reached out is not urgent, please leave me a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911 or contact the twenty-four-hour Child Protective Services Emergency Hotline at 337-555-0100.” My heart sinks. I can’t leave a message. I think the recording is about to end, that I’ll have to try again later, when she adds, “You may also reach me on my cell phone,” and gives another number. I scramble in my purse for a pen and scribble it beneath her work number.
This one, I don’t call. Instead, I text the briefest of messages:
Call me at this number from an untraceable phone. —E
Then I wait, pacing up the street, getting a coffee from a street vendor, drinking as I alternate between checking the phone every few seconds and glancing around me—making sure no one’s watching. I could try harder to find Jocelyn, too. Google was a bust, but maybe Sam can do some digging and get me a phone number. The police have access to that type of stuff, don’t they? But even the thought of that makes me nauseated. The fewer people I talk to about what happened, the better. Plus, the IP address came from Louisiana, not far from Ivy, and I never heard Jocelyn came back to town.
After twenty minutes of my mind racing, a jolting realization hits me. I’m not sure what took me so long to think of it, but what if Ivy doesn’t realize it’s me? We haven’t spoken in twenty years. She might think it’s some weirdo whose name begins with the letter E, might delete the message without a second thought. She works at CPS, for Christ’s sake, has gotten married, had kids. There must be a million other things on her mind.
But no . . . she’ll know. Hopefully.
I hurry to the train and take it back toward home.
I would certainly know it was her if I got that text signed with an I.
I’m one glass of pinot grigio in when the phone rings—a strange, shrill jangle that confuses me until my gaze falls on the prepaid. That area code I’d recognize anywhere. I grab the phone, press it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Elizabeth—”
“Wait.” Words threaten to spill from my mouth, but first I have to be sure. “This is a safe line?”
“I borrowed my mother-in-law’s phone. She’s practically a saint.”
My blood pressure comes down a notch, but still, I reach across the table for my wine, take a swig.
“What happened? Why . . .” A pause. “Why?” she says. “We made a pact.”
I knock back another swallow of wine. Good thing I opened a fresh bottle. I steel my nerves and just say it. “Someone knows. Someone besides us.”
“Someone—” Her voice cuts off.
The silence between us feels heavy.
“That’s not possible,” she says. “You know it’s not. It was only me, you, and—well, he certainly can’t tell anyone.” In the background, a child yells—a reminder that she has a life. A life she wants to protect. Surely she wouldn’t have told anyone, right?
“I would have said the same thing until a couple weeks ago.” I give her the abbreviated version—that I’m teaching a class, that first chapters came in, that a Hannah Greer just happened to write the story of what happened all those years ago and all of the details are the same as what Jocelyn described, down to the yellow finch. “It’s exactly the same. Exactly. And I looked up her IP address. You can see where someone’s sending an email from, like their city. It’s . . . it’s close. To where we lived.”