Chapter 3: What Was Hidden in the Car
I didn't sleep.
I lay beside Daniel in the dark and listened to him breathe and told myself I was waiting for morning.
But what I was really doing was counting the hours until I could move without him noticing.
At 5:47 a.m.
his breathing slowed and deepened.
I slid out of bed.
Took his car keys from the hook by the kitchen door.
Stepped outside in bare feet onto the cold driveway.
His car was unlocked.
It always was — he said there was nothing worth stealing.
I started with the glove compartment.
Registration.
A gas receipt.
An old parking ticket.
I checked under the seats.
Nothing.
I checked the back seat.
A gym bag.
A water bottle.
A folded jacket.
Then I opened the trunk.
There was a cardboard box pushed against the left side.
The flap was folded shut, not taped.
I opened it.
Inside were folders.
Manila folders, the kind with the metal clasp at the top.
I lifted the first one.
It had Marcus's name on the tab.
My hands weren't steady but I opened it.
Inside were printed emails.
Dates going back four years.
Some of them were between Marcus and a woman named Cheryl.
Some of them were between Marcus and Daniel.
I read the first one from Daniel.
*She's asking questions again.
You need to handle this before it becomes a problem.*
The email was dated eleven months before Lily was removed from Marcus's home.
I stood in the driveway in the grey morning light and read it three times.
Then I heard the front door open.
"What are you doing out here?"
Daniel was standing on the step in his T-shirt, squinting at me.
I closed the box flap.
I didn't put it back.
I held it against my chest and turned around.
"I found your box, Daniel."
He went very still.
The same stillness as the night before.
The kind that isn't confusion — the kind that is calculation.
"That's Marcus's stuff.
He asked me to store it when he moved."
"Why does it have emails between you and him about a girl asking questions?"
He came down the step.
"You don't understand what you're reading."
"Then explain it to me."
"Come inside.
You'll wake Lily."
"Tell me right here."
He stopped at the bottom of the step.
His jaw tightened.
"Those emails were about a neighbor.
A woman who kept interfering with Marcus's business.
That's all."
"Lily was in that house for eight months, Daniel.
Eight months.
And you knew she was there and you never told me."
"I didn't think it was relevant."
"She flinched when you walked up the stairs last night."
"She's a traumatized child.
She flinches at everything."
I looked at him.
Really looked at him.
The way you look at someone when you're trying to find the person you married underneath the person standing in front of you.
I couldn't find him.
"I'm calling her caseworker this morning," I said.
Something shifted in his face.
Not fear exactly.
Closer to warning.
"Think carefully before you do that," he said.
"You don't have the full picture.
And once you make that call, things get complicated very fast."
I walked past him into the house.
Took the box upstairs.
Locked the bedroom door.
At 7:15, Lily knocked softly.
"Can I come in?"
I opened the door.
She was in her pajamas, holding her stuffed rabbit by one ear.
She looked at the box on the bed and then at me.
"Did you find the papers?" she asked.
My breath stopped.
"What papers, sweetheart?"
She pointed at the box.
"The lady said he kept papers.
She said if anyone ever found them, we'd be safe."
"What lady, Lily?
The woman in the photograph?"
She nodded.
Then she said a name I didn't recognize.
May you like
But when I looked at the second folder in the box — the one I hadn't opened yet — that name was on the tab.
And underneath it was a handwritten note, folded in thirds, addressed to whoever finds this.
