Chapter Four: The Man Who Sold Her Twice

I read Fenne's text three times.

A man was parked outside the school gates at pickup yesterday. He didn't come in. He just sat in his car and watched.

"Ivy." Talia's voice was very careful.

"I know."

"He was outside Eli's school."

"I know, Talia."

I put the phone face down on the table. Stood up. My chair scraped back louder than I intended. I went to the window and stood there looking at the street and made myself breathe at a normal pace because Eli was going to walk through that door at three fifteen and I needed to be completely steady by then.

"What are you going to do?" Talia asked.

"Pick Eli up myself today. And tomorrow. And every day until I know exactly what is happening."

"And then what?"

I turned around. Looked at her across the kitchen.

"Then I deal with it," I said.

Talia looked at me for a long moment. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she picked up her coffee, finished it in one go and stood up.

"I'll cover the school run with you," she said. "Don't argue."

I didn't argue.

What I didn't tell her — what I didn't say out loud because saying it out loud would make it too real — was that I already knew exactly who had given them my address. I had known since the fourth phone call the night before.

There was only one person outside of Maplewood Hollow who knew where I was.

Only one person who would sell that information without losing a single night of sleep over it.

Two hundred miles south, in a flat that smelled like old takeaway and stale choices, Bain Croft opened his front door at half past nine still in his dressing gown.

He was expecting his landlord. Three weeks overdue on that particular conversation and actively avoiding it.

He got something considerably worse.

The man on his doorstep was tall, dark and close shaved with a coat that cost more than Bain's rent and the patient stillness of someone who had never been kept waiting longer than he decided to allow. Flat brown eyes. Hands in his pockets. Not a flicker of anything on his face.

Bain knew immediately.

Not who the man was. What he represented.

"Mr Croft."

"Yes."

"Rhys Coda. I work for Cyrus Wray." He looked at Bain without moving. "May I come in."

Not a question.

Bain stepped back.

Rhys walked in and looked around the flat once — the stack of unopened letters on the table, the glass from last night still on the counter, the general atmosphere of a man who had been managing badly for a long time — and said nothing about any of it. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands still in his pockets and simply waited.

"Tea," Bain said.

"No."

Bain put the kettle on anyway. He needed something to do with his hands and his mind was already running numbers — the kind of rapid, ugly calculation he was very good at when money was on one side of the equation and people were on the other.

"Mr Wray needs to locate his wife," Rhys said.

"Ex wife."

"They were never formally divorced."

Bain turned around. That was new information. He stored it.

"I haven't spoken to Ivy in years," he said. "We lost touch after she—"

"Mr Croft." Still quiet. Still completely still. "I will ask you once more. After that I will ask Mr Wray's legal team to examine the guardianship documentation you filed in 2017 more carefully. I understand there were some irregularities."

The kettle boiled.

Bain didn't pour it.

He stood with both hands on the counter and looked at the wall above the sink and thought about all the things he told himself when he needed to sleep at night. That it was necessary. That she was young and would have struggled. That clearing his debts was simply how the world worked and someone always paid and better it was her than him.

He had told himself these things so many times they had almost stopped feeling like lies.

Almost.

He turned around.

"Maplewood Hollow," he said. "Two hundred miles north. Cottage on the main street. She runs an alterations shop. Goes by Kay."

Rhys listened without writing anything down.

"Her routine," he said.

"School run at eight thirty. Shop opens at nine. She picks the boy up at three fifteen."

The room went quiet in a specific way.

"The boy," Rhys said.

Bain understood his mistake immediately. The way you understand you have said too much — not before the words come out but the exact second after, when you cannot pull them back.

"She has a son," he said. "He's about five."

"About five."

"She had him after she left. I don't know who the father is. She never told me."

Rhys looked at him for a moment. Nothing changed in his face.

He turned toward the door.

"That's everything?" Bain called after him. "We're settled?"

"Mr Wray's legal team will be in touch about the documentation separately."

The door closed.

Bain stood in the kitchen listening to footsteps going down the stairs, the building's front door, then nothing. He opened the cupboard above the sink. Poured something that wasn't tea.

He told himself it was a reunion. That she was practical. That she would understand.

He drank standing up and didn't look at his own reflection in the dark window above the sink because he had learned, over many years, that there were things it was better not to look at directly.

Outside on the street below, Rhys Coda put his phone to his ear.

His voice was quiet. One sentence.

"She has a child. A boy. He looks about five years old."