CHAPTER 6: Invisible

I threw up twice before seven on Tuesday morning.

After that I lay on the bathroom tiles with my cheek on the cold floor and ate crackers one at a time. The book said it was normal at six weeks. The book did not say what to do with the rest of the day.

At nine I called a clinic.

"Name?"

"Eliana Thomas."

She took my date of birth and then asked for the insurance card. I asked how soon the first appointment could be. Three weeks for new patients, and she couldn't hold a slot without the card number.

"I'll call back."

I hung up before she could ask again. I didn't know yet which name I wanted on a file.

No missed calls. I checked twice.

Mark had called on Friday. A short call, a list of what would be done with my things, and a line about the lawyers. At the end came one more line: "Mr. Moore wishes you well." I told him to tell Mr. Moore I wished him the same, and I hung up on that.

I had texted Mrs. Tate on Monday night. She had kept house for us for five years and she would at least answer. I asked if I could collect one box from the closet, my mother's letters, on Tuesday at eleven. She wrote back within minutes. Of course, Mrs. Moore.

She was the last person in the world who still called me that. I read it again and put the phone face down. Then I got up and washed my face.

At eleven I stood at the side door of a house I had lived in for seven years and put in the code. I had chosen it myself, my mother's birthday. The keypad blinked red. I tried it again, slower, in case my fingers were wrong. Red.

Mrs. Tate opened the door from inside. She didn't look at my face. She looked at a spot near my collar. "I'm sorry. The code was changed on Friday."

"It's all right."

"Miss Kelly is resting upstairs. She asked if you'd use the garage."

The garage smelled of gasoline and cold concrete and my stomach turned. I breathed through my mouth until it passed. Three black bags stood against the wall with my name on masking tape, in handwriting I didn't know. The banker's box was on the floor beside them with its lid on crooked. Someone had looked inside. I straightened the lid.

"Miss Kelly said the closet needed to be fresh for her recovery." Mrs. Tate was talking to the floor. "Mr. Moore said it was fine."

"Did he say anything else?"

"He asked if you had everything you needed." She stopped. "He didn't ask how you were."

"Thank you, Mrs. Tate."

"He's home at six now. He used to be home at nine." She heard herself and stopped. "He carries her tray up himself."

I looked at the bags again. Three. Two of them were shoes.

I picked up the box. The garage door was closed and I didn't know the code for that either, so she walked me back through the house to the front.

The door to the main bedroom stood open. A pale coat hung over the chair where I used to drop my cardigan. Grayson's gray coat lay over the back of it, under hers.

Across the hall the study door was shut. Grayson wasn't home, and I stood outside it a moment anyway. The dining room table was set for two at one end, with white roses in a low vase. I had always used tulips. Somebody else was going to eat at my place.

The hall smelled of lilies now. I had always used lemon polish. In the front hall I stopped. The wedding photograph was gone from the stairs. The wall behind it was a clean square, a shade lighter than the rest.

Five days, and nothing of mine was left in that house. Nobody had raised their voice. I had half wanted a scene.

On the second floor a curtain moved. I didn't look up.

At the front door Mrs. Tate was crying without a sound. She lowered her voice. "Miss Kelly asks me who calls. I write it all down for her. I... you should know."

I thanked her. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Moore."

"It's Thomas now. You can call me Eliana."

"I've never once... called you that." She was deciding whether she was allowed.

"You can start."

I carried the box down the steps in both arms so my hands wouldn't show. I got into a cab with it on my knees. It weighed less than my handbag. At a red light I lifted the lid.

My mother had been dead eleven years and these were the only things left that she had touched. The top letter had the same last line as all the others. Keep your chin up, Ellie. Nobody had said that to me in eleven years. I shut it again.

I needed a doctor and a lawyer and a different address, in that order.

The radio was playing the song from our first dance. I asked the driver to turn it off. He did, without asking why.

He took the long way past the park. "Quiet street, yours." He glanced at me in the mirror. "Nothing ever happens there."

"No."

I was three minutes from my building when the black phone buzzed. "Ms. Thomas. Where are you?"

"In a cab. Two minutes from home. Walter, what is it?"

"An hour ago someone searched the lease records for your building. The account belongs to a licensed investigator."

I sat up. "How did they get the building?"

"Your driver on Thursday, we think. They would have traced the fare. The unit number came from the leasing agent this morning. It cost them two hundred dollars."

"Who hired him?"

"I don't know yet." I could hear him typing.

"Is he alone?" As far as they could tell, yes. "How many people have my unit number?"

"The agent. The investigator. Whoever is paying him. The client account was opened Monday afternoon." He stopped, and Walter Finch does not stop. "And there is more."

"There's a gray sedan on your block. The man in it has been there since seven. I have his photograph."

"Since seven."

"Do not go in through the front."

I looked up. The cab was turning onto my street. A gray sedan sat at the curb across from my building, and the man behind the wheel had a camera in his lap. He was looking straight at my cab.