Chapter 3: What Genevieve Knew
Her name was Nora Voss.
She told me that without being asked, as if she understood I needed something solid to hold onto while the room tilted around me.
"How long did you know my wife?" I said.
"Eleven months.
We met at a clinic on the west side.
Not the kind of clinic you'd know about." She glanced at the photograph still lying on the table between us.
"Genevieve wasn't there as a patient.
She was volunteering.
She came every Tuesday."
I had not known that.
Every Tuesday for eleven months, and I had not known.
"She never told me."
"She didn't tell you a lot of things toward the end." Nora's voice wasn't cruel.
It was careful.
"Not because she didn't love you.
Because she was trying to protect you from something she wasn't sure how to explain."
Prescott moved behind me.
I heard him pull out a chair and sit down.
That was unusual.
Prescott never sat during meetings.
"What is the baby in that photograph?" I said.
Nora looked at me steadily.
"Her name is Cora.
She's eighteen months old.
Genevieve delivered her to a safe placement seven weeks before she passed."
"Genevieve didn't have another child."
"No," Nora said.
"She didn't.
But someone close to you did.
Someone who couldn't keep her.
Someone who begged Genevieve to help her disappear quietly, before you found out."
The photograph was face-up on the table.
Genevieve's smile.
The baby wrapped in a yellow blanket.
A window behind them showing a grey Chicago sky.
"Who?" I said.
Nora reached into her jacket again.
This time she placed a folded piece of paper on the table.
Handwritten.
I recognized the stationery before I recognized the handwriting.
Cream paper with a small embossed crest at the top.
Mercer family stationery.
"Genevieve left that for you," Nora said.
"She made me promise not to deliver it unless the twins were in danger.
She said you'd need a reason to believe what came next.
She said the letter would be the reason."
My hands were on the table.
I didn't reach for the paper.
"You said the twins aren't sick by accident."
"I did."
"Explain that."
Nora folded her hands again.
That gesture, I was beginning to understand, was how she steadied herself before saying something that would cost her.
"Genevieve spent her last three months trying to prove it.
She got close enough that it scared someone.
Someone with access to this house, to your children, to the things your children eat and drink and breathe every day." She paused.
"She told me that if anything happened to her before she could finish, the twins would eventually get sick.
She said she was running out of time to stop it."
The room was very quiet.
Prescott's chair scraped back.
"Lawson." His voice was low.
"The south wing.
The new air filtration system.
It was installed fourteen months ago."
Fourteen months ago.
May you like
Eight months before the twins' first symptoms.
I picked up the letter.
