Chapter 5: Someone Is Watching
I forwarded the photograph to Richard before I had fully processed what I was looking at.
He called me back in four minutes.
"The first text came from a prepaid number.
Untraceable as of this morning." His voice was controlled but moving fast.
"The photograph — do you recognize the angle?"
"It's from the sidewalk.
Maybe twenty feet from the front steps."
"Taken today?"
"The recycling bin is out.
We put it out Thursdays."
"So someone was at your house this morning while you were at the hospital." A pause.
"Grace, I need you to not go home alone."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Is there anyone you trust completely?
Not family.
Not anyone connected to Daniel."
I thought of Mrs.
Alvarez, who had opened her door in the middle of the night and wrapped an arm around me without asking a single question.
"My neighbor," I said.
"She's seventy-three and she has no idea who Daniel's attorney is."
"Call her.
Tell her you need someone to be at the house when you arrive.
Don't explain more than that."
Mrs.
Alvarez picked up on the first ring.
When I told her I was bringing Noah home and that I would feel better with company, she said, "I'll put the kettle on," and asked nothing else.
That afternoon, a hospital social worker named Patricia came to complete Noah's discharge paperwork.
She was brisk and thorough and when she got to the section asking about the home environment, she looked up at me with the particular steadiness of someone trained to ask the next question without flinching.
"Will both parents be present in the home?"
"No," I said.
She wrote something.
"Is the home environment safe for the infant?"
"It will be."
She looked at me for a moment.
Then she slid a card across the table.
"This is our family advocacy line.
It's staffed around the clock.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Sometimes people just need to know the number exists."
I took the card.
"Thank you, Patricia."
"You're doing well," she said.
It wasn't the kind of thing I expected her to say.
It landed differently because of that.
Mrs.
Alvarez was waiting on the front steps when the car pulled up.
She came down the path without being asked, took the hospital bag from my shoulder, and held the door while I carried Noah inside.
The house felt different.
I stood in the hallway and tried to identify what had changed, and then I realized: nothing had changed.
It was exactly as I had left it five days ago.
The same coat hooks, the same side table, the same faint smell of the candle I'd burned the night before Noah was born.
Daniel had not been here.
I checked every room.
His suitcase was not in the bedroom.
His toiletries were not in the bathroom.
He had come back to the country and had not come home.
Mrs.
Alvarez stood in the kitchen doorway watching me move through the house.
"He's not here," I said.
"No," she said.
"He's not."
She said it as if she already knew.
I turned to look at her.
"Mrs.
Alvarez.
Did someone come to the house this morning?"
She set down the kettle.
Her hands were careful.
"A man," she said.
"I didn't know him.
He stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes.
He took out his phone." She paused.
"I wrote down the license plate."
She pulled a folded piece of paper from her cardigan pocket and held it out to me.
I stared at it.
Seventy-three years old, a kettle on the stove, and she had thought to do the one thing that mattered.
"Mrs.
Alvarez," I said.
"Don't thank me yet," she said.
"Thank me when it's over."
I called Richard and read him the plate number.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I know someone who can run this," he said.
"Give me until morning."
I put Noah down in the bassinet I'd moved to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
My phone showed two missed calls from Daniel and one from a number I didn't recognize — different from the prepaid number that had sent the texts.
I called it back.
A woman answered.
Her voice was smooth and unhurried, as if she had been expecting me.
"Grace," said Celeste Morgan.
May you like
"We need to talk.
Without the lawyers."
