Chapter 5: What Mrs. Aldrich Kept
They found Mrs.
Aldrich the next morning.
Detective Reyes came back to my room at half past nine, set a coffee on my tray table without asking, and sat down in the chair beside the bed.
"She still lives in the building," she said.
"Apartment 4B.
She's been waiting."
"Waiting?"
"Her words.
She said — and I'm quoting — 'I wondered how long it would take someone to come.' She's been holding that envelope for eight months."
I looked at the coffee.
Steam curled off the top.
"What was in it?"
Detective Reyes opened her notebook.
"Bank statements for a joint savings account in your name and your husband's.
Opened four years ago.
Deposits going back three and a half years, consistent with what you'd described as a baby fund.
Withdrawals beginning fourteen months ago." She looked up.
"The account was emptied over six months.
Small amounts at first.
Then larger ones.
The final transfer — the one that closed it — went to a private account registered to a company called Calloway Family Holdings."
"I've never heard of that company."
"It was registered eighteen months ago.
Your husband is the sole director." She paused.
"Your name is not on it."
The coffee sat there.
I didn't touch it.
"How much?" I asked.
"The total withdrawn was sixty-three thousand dollars."
I had worked for four years in a job I didn't love, putting money away every month for a child who wasn't born yet, and he had taken all of it and built a company with it and put my name on none of it.
"There's more," Detective Reyes said.
She didn't apologize for it.
I appreciated that.
"Mrs.
Aldrich kept something else.
A voicemail.
Your sister left it on Mrs.
Aldrich's landline the night before she d— the night before she was found."
She held out her phone.
I looked at it.
"You don't have to listen now," she said.
"Play it."
The recording was forty-three seconds long.
Mara's voice was low and fast, the way it got when she was trying not to cry.
"Eleanor, it's Mara.
I'm sorry to call so late.
I found something else today — I think he knows I've been looking.
He called me this afternoon and he was very calm and very polite and that's when I knew.
I'm going to take everything to the police tomorrow morning.
I just wanted someone to know where I was going.
I'll call you when I'm done.
Don't worry.
I'll be fine."
The recording ended.
She was not fine.
I handed the phone back.
My hand was steady.
I don't know how.
"She was going to the police," I said.
"Yes."
"And the next morning—"
"She was found at the bottom of the stairwell at six forty-two a.m.
The initial report listed it as an accidental fall." Detective Reyes closed her notebook.
"We're reopening it."
The door to my room opened and a nurse came in to check my chart.
Neither of us spoke until she left.
"He's going to say I'm unstable," I said.
"He's been telling people that for months.
He'll say the recordings were edited.
He'll say Mara was troubled.
He'll say I manipulated all of it."
"He can say whatever he wants." Detective Reyes picked up her notebook.
"We have forty-three seconds of your sister's voice, eight months of bank records, and seventeen audio files recorded over two days in a backyard." She stood.
"He's going to need a very good lawyer."
She was almost at the door again.
"Detective," I said.
She stopped.
"Did Mrs.
Aldrich — did she know Mara well?"
"Well enough." She paused.
"She said Mara talked about you constantly.
Said you were the strong one." A beat.
"She said Mara was very proud of you."
The door closed.
I put both hands on my stomach and stayed very still.
May you like
Outside the window, the morning was bright and indifferent, and somewhere across the city, my husband did not yet know what was in a blue envelope in apartment 4B.
He was about to find out.
