Chapter 2

Dru's Subaru came up the drive at 4:30. I knew the sound-the muffler scraping the frost heave by the mailbox.

Mamie was in her chair. Cole was in the shop. I stood at the sink with my hands in the water and watched Dru come in carrying the tote bag, black, zipper broken, the one she never fixed.

"Wren." She set the bag on the table. "You look pale."

"I'm fine."

"Sit down."

I didn't sit.

"Suit yourself." She pulled a folder out of the tote. Manilla. Dog-eared. "Dr. Feldman's office called back. He can see Mamie Thursday. That's not why I came."

I looked at the folder. I didn't touch it.

"You've been confused, honey. Everybody's noticed."

"I'm not confused."

"You left the stove on Tuesday. You called the bank about a bill that was paid. You told the mailman there was a camera in the oak." She smiled. "It's the pregnancy. It happens."

The folder had a stamp on the corner. State of Vermont. Mental Health.

"I'm not signing anything," I said.

"You don't have to." Still smiling. "There's a doctor involved now. This isn't up to you."

I walked out of the kitchen slow. In the hall I heard her on her phone, low, not for me: "Dr. Feldman? Dru Alcott. Yes, I'm with her now... she's agitated, she's talking about cameras and conspiracies... no, not violent yet, but I'm worried about the baby... yes. Six o'clock."

I didn't go to Mamie's room. I went out the mudroom door and across the yard to the office.

The office was cold. Diesel smell. The printer was out of toner. The internet had been shut off in January-Cole hadn't paid the bill and told me it was a luxury. That mattered later, and it mattered then: there was no way to send anything anywhere.

I turned on the laptop. It took a long time. While it booted I stood at the window and watched the house. Nobody came out.

I took the card from my coat pocket and slid it into the slot on the side of the laptop.

The file was at the top. Twenty-one seconds, timestamp 4:12:47 p.m. I pressed play.

The frame was high and wide, from the oak, looking down at the fence. My back against the wire. Cole's shoulder in the left of the frame. I watched myself brace.

Then I heard him. "The baby will be born without a mother."

It didn't sound like a threat on the recording. That was the worst part. It sounded like information.

Then the click. Then Dru's voice, flat, close to the microphone, like she was standing right there:

"Let them think she tripped."

I stopped the video. I backed it up and played it again. The same three things: the shove, the words, his mother's instruction.

The camera had a twenty-second buffer-Dru had explained it once, proud of the feature-so the clip started before the trigger and ended after. There was nothing else on it. No proof of the pills, no proof of the sale, no proof of anything except that my husband had put his hands on me and his mother had thought of the excuse.

But it was proof. It was the first proof of anything in fourteen months.

I ejected the card and put it back in my pocket.

I didn't know what to do with it yet. I knew I couldn't keep it on me-Cole would look, eventually, and Cole was thorough when he was scared. I stood in the office and thought about the house, about bags and drawers and the truck, and then I thought about Mamie's cane.

I went back to the house through the mudroom. Dru was still in the kitchen. I heard her hang up. I went down the hall to Mamie's room.

She was awake. She'd been listening. Her eyes were wet and clear.

I knelt by the bed and picked up the cane from where it had slid against the chair rail. Slate knob, worn smooth under my thumb. I twisted it. It turned. Underneath was a hollow shaft, bored out years ago by her husband, who'd liked to keep his fishing line in it.

I took the card out of my pocket and dropped it in. It rattled once, soft, like a coin in a poor box.

I screwed the knob back down.

Mamie watched the whole thing. Then she lifted her hand and tapped the bed rail. Three times.

I put the cane back across her lap.

"Three taps means you're scared," I said. "I know."

She tapped again. Three. And then she said, clear as anything, "Three means come."

I sat down on the floor beside her bed and put my forehead on the mattress. Outside, Dru was back on the phone with the doctor, and she was laughing.