Chapter 45: Noah

“Noah, baby, is Daddy still in the house?”

Silence on the line. Then a sniff. “No. He went in the car. Loud.”

“Okay, that’s good, baby. Where’s Mommy?”

“Kitchen. She said go upstairs and watch Bluey.” A pause, very serious. “I didn’t watch Bluey.”

“You did the right thing calling.” Rachel was already in the hallway in her socks, one arm in her coat, the phone pinned to her ear with her shoulder. “Can you do one more thing for me? Stay upstairs. Stay right there. I’m coming.”

“Okay.”

Then a click, and he was gone.

She called Owen before the screen went dark. He picked up on the first ring, said “Lobby. Fifteen minutes,” and hung up before she could thank him.

* * *

Owen drove like somebody had taught him by shooting at him. The Saw Mill at seven-thirty, frost on the guardrails, brake lights stacked to Hastings, and he cut through all of it in his Subaru with a face like a closed laptop.

“You understand I’m against this,” he said.

“You’ve said.”

“Julian’s in Boston until noon. If he finds out I drove you to your husband’s house at dawn…”

“Then don’t tell him till noon. Owen, he’s four.”

Owen didn’t say anything else. But he went faster.

Linden Court looked like a Christmas card. That was the part that made her want to scream. Wreath on the door, white lights on the porch rails, the big maple bare and black. Her mother’s insurance money in every brick. A plastic snowman in the yard she’d never seen before, grinning.

No Range Rover in the driveway.

“I’m staying in the car,” Owen said, “with the window down. You yell, I’m in there in four seconds.”

“I won’t yell.”

“Everybody yells.”

* * *

Chloe opened the door in Rachel’s robe.

Of course she did. The green one, again, belt tied tight. No makeup, hair in a claw clip. She looked about nineteen.

And high on her left cheekbone, under a layer of concealer that was two shades too light, a red mark. Not a bruise yet. The size of a knuckle.

“What,” Chloe said. Flat. No sugar in it at all this time.

“Noah called me.”

Something moved behind Chloe’s eyes, fast, then got slammed shut. “Noah’s four. Noah calls the Wiggles. He calls Santa. He found your new number on the lawyer papers Michael leaves all over the counter. Congratulations, it’s in the court file.” She started to close the door. “Go home, Rachel.”

Rachel put her palm flat on the door. Not pushing. Just there.

Over Chloe’s shoulder she could see the front hall. Her hall. The runner from HomeGoods, the hooks she’d hung herself with a level and a YouTube video. And on the wall by the stairs, at about the height of a man’s shoulder, a hole. Round, ragged, fist-sized, the drywall caved in like a crushed eggshell and a little white dust on the floor beneath it that nobody had swept.

Right next to a framed photo of Michael, Chloe, and Noah at the beach. Where Rachel’s wedding picture used to hang.

“He did that,” Rachel said.

“I did that. With the vacuum. Moving the vacuum.”

“And your face?”

“Cabinet.” Chloe’s hand floated up toward her cheek and stopped halfway, like she’d thought better of it. “I walked into the cabinet. Over the sink. You know the one. Oh, wait. You don’t live here.”

Rachel let that one go by. Too tired, too sad. Also, petty as it was, she noticed the cabinet over the sink was the one she’d told Michael for six years needed a softer hinge.

She reached into her coat pocket and took out the card she’d written on in the car, on her knee, with Owen’s pen.

“This is a hotline. In White Plains. They’re good, they don’t call the cops unless you want them to.” She held it out. “And this is my number. The new one. If it’s ever three in the morning and you need to get Noah out, not you, fine, I get it, but him, you call me. I’ll have a place. A real one. Nobody will find you.”

Chloe looked at the card. She didn’t take it.

“Oh my God,” she said softly. “Look at you.”

“Chloe.”

“Look at you. Standing on my porch in your little cashmere coat he bought you. Feeling sorry for me.” Her voice climbed. “You think you’re better than me? You were exactly where I am. Eleven years! At least I got a ring out of it!”

“I’m not trying to…”

This one was faster than the courthouse, and Rachel still didn’t see it coming.

Open hand, Chloe’s whole body behind it. Rachel’s face whipped toward the yard, and for a second the only thing she could see was that plastic snowman, grinning at her crooked.

Behind her, a car door opened. Fast.

Rachel put her hand up without turning around. Flat, back toward the Subaru. Stay there. She heard the door hesitate. She heard it not close.

She straightened up slow and touched her cheek. Her fingers came away clean, which surprised her.

Chloe was breathing hard, chest heaving under the silk, her hand still up and shaking. She looked like she wanted to do it again. She also looked like she was about to cry, and she’d have died before she let that happen in front of Rachel Hayes.

That was when Rachel saw him.

Noah. Halfway up the stairs, sitting on the step, small in footie pajamas with trucks on them. His chin on his knees. Clutched against his chest, Mr. Hopps, the gray stuffed rabbit Rachel had let him keep, the one that had been hers when she was little, with the ear her mother re-sewed in blue thread. He was holding it by the tummy, the way she’d told him to.

He’d seen all of it. He was watching his mother’s hand, still raised.

Chloe saw Rachel looking and turned and saw him too. Her face did something terrible. She snatched her hand down.

“Upstairs, baby,” she said, and her voice wobbled all over the place. “Go upstairs. Now.”

He didn’t move.

Rachel bent, slowly, and set the card down on the little table by the door, the one where she used to drop her keys. Next to a bowl of Michael’s receipts.

“Keep it anyway,” she said.

Chloe turned back to her. Her eyes were wet and wild, and when she spoke she kept it low, so the boy on the stairs wouldn’t hear.

“You want to help? Then listen. He’s going to put it all on you. Everything.” She swallowed. “And I’m going to let him, because it isn’t going to be me.”

Then she shut Rachel’s own front door in her face, and on the other side of it the deadbolt slid home. Second time this year Rachel had heard that sound from the porch.