Chapter 6: Five O'Clock
Carol arrived at four fifty-eight.
I heard her before I saw her — her voice in the hallway, firm and unhurried, telling a nurse that she was Nora Mercer's sister and she had driven six hours and she would very much like to see her now, please.
The nurse said something I couldn't hear.
Carol said: "Thank you."
Then she was in the doorway.
She was fifty-three years old and had not slept and had driven through the night and she looked, to me, like the most reliable thing I had seen in years.
She crossed the room in four steps and put her arms around me very carefully — she had always been careful with people, Carol, even in moments of urgency — and held on.
I didn't cry.
I had cried earlier, in the X-ray room, in the dark, alone.
Now I just held on back.
"I'm here," she said.
"I know."
She pulled back and looked at my face, then at the brace on my wrist, then at the way I was holding myself slightly sideways to protect my ribs.
Her expression didn't change.
But her eyes did.
"Tell me," she said.
So I told her.
All of it.
Not the careful, ordered version I had written for the detective.
The real version — the version that didn't have dates and didn't always make sense and sometimes circled back on itself because that is how six years actually feel when you try to say them out loud.
Carol listened without interrupting.
She sat in the chair Patricia had vacated and she listened with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on my face and she did not once say *why didn't you tell me* or *I had no idea* or any of the things that would have made me feel worse.
When I finished, she said: "What do you need from me right now?"
"I need you to be here when the detective comes."
"I'll be here."
"And I need you to go to the house." I reached for the six pages I had written and took one of them — the last one, where I had written the description of the locked drawer and what I had seen inside it.
"I need you to get the fireproof box from the back of the closet in our bedroom.
My passport is in it.
And some documents."
Carol looked at the page.
"Will Graham be there?"
"I don't know.
Probably not — he'll be managing his family.
But if he is—"
"I've been managing Graham Mercer since the first time I met him," Carol said.
"I just didn't know what I was managing."
She folded the page and put it in her coat pocket.
"There's something else," I said.
"The bottom left drawer in his office.
It's locked.
Don't touch it — don't try to open it.
But if it's open, or if anything is out on the desk—"
"I'll photograph it."
I looked at her.
"Nora," she said, "I'm a retired paralegal.
I know what evidence looks like."
I had forgotten that.
Or perhaps I had not forgotten — perhaps I had simply stopped thinking of my own life as something that might one day require evidence.
She left at five fifteen.
Patricia returned at six thirty with coffee and a breakfast sandwich I could not eat but held anyway because having something warm in my hands helped.
At six fifty-five, Detective Renata Okafor knocked on the open door.
She was perhaps forty, with close-cropped hair and a calm, methodical way of moving that reminded me of Dr.
Alvarez — the kind of stillness that comes not from passivity but from having learned that rushing rarely helps.
She pulled up a chair, set a small recorder on the table, and looked at me.
"Mrs.
Mercer.
I've read Dr.
Alvarez's report and the patient advocate's notes.
I want to hear everything in your own words, at your own pace." She paused.
"Before we start — is there anything you want to tell me that isn't in those documents?"
I thought of Diane Voss.
I thought of *I have documents.*
"Yes," I said.
"There's a woman you need to contact."
Detective Okafor's pen moved.
"And," I said, "my sister went to the house this morning.
I need to know if that's a problem."
The detective looked up.
"Why did she go to the house?"
"To get my passport and some personal documents."
A pause.
"Did you ask her to look for anything else?"
"I asked her not to touch a locked drawer in my husband's office.
But I told her that if anything was already out — on the desk, in the open — to photograph it."
Detective Okafor studied me for a moment.
Then she said: "Your sister sounds like a careful person."
"She was a paralegal for twenty-two years."
The detective almost smiled.
"Then let's start from the beginning."
My phone buzzed on the bedside table.
Carol's name on the screen.
I looked at Detective Okafor.
"May I?"
She nodded.
I answered.
Carol's voice was very quiet.
"The drawer wasn't locked, Nora."
The room went still.
"He left in a hurry," Carol said.
"There are papers on the desk.
I've photographed everything.
And Nora—" A pause.
"There are two names on these documents.
Graham's.
And a woman named Diane Voss."
Detective Okafor was already leaning forward.
May you like
"Tell your sister not to touch anything else," she said.
"And give me that address."
