The Picture

Chapter 8:

I read the text seven times.

I saw you tonight. You've grown up so much. — Mom.

Seven times. Sitting up in bed in the dark with the phone two inches from my face and Lily asleep six feet away.

Then I did the stupidest thing I've ever done.

I replied.

Who is this.

Three dots. They appeared. Disappeared. Appeared.

You know who this is, baby. You have my eyes.

My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the phone.

I don't know you. My mother left when I was sixteen.

The dots again. Longer this time.

I know. I'm sorry.

You're sorry.

I'm sorry and I know that's not enough and I know you're scared.

How do you know I'm scared.

Because I saw the man on the roof.

The room got very cold.

I looked at the window. Curtains drawn. Streetlight leaking through the bottom edge.

What man.

The one watching your alley. He's good. He's not as good as he thinks he is. Tell him to check the south corner. There's a car there that isn't his.

I was already typing before I finished reading.

I called Kael.

He picked up on the first ring. Not half asleep. Not groggy. Just there.

"What's wrong."

"South corner of my building. Check it."

A pause. Then I heard him move. Fast. Then his voice, lower, not to me: "Rook. South corner. Now."

"What's happening?"

"Where'd you get that."

"My mother just texted me."

The line went quiet.

"Kael."

"I'm here."

"She said she saw the man on the roof. She said she saw you."

"She didn't see me."

"She knew you were there."

"Then she's close enough to see the alley, which means she's in a building, which means she's been in a building all night."

I pulled my knees up.

"She sent a photo. Of Lily. She said she saw me tonight."

"Did she say where."

"No."

"Send me the photo."

I did. Then I sat there in the dark with the phone against my ear and listened to him breathing and did not cry.

"Okay," Kael said after a minute.

"'Okay'?"

"The photo was taken from inside Rita's."

I said, "What?"

"Table six. There's a menu board in the corner of the frame. Rita's has one menu board. It's behind the counter, on the left. You only see it from the booth on the right side."

I looked at the photo again. Lily in her little blue dress, sitting on the floor next to a stool, coloring a menu with a red crayon. The edge of the menu board behind her. Half a special board. Half a pie case.

Rita's.

Today.

"You were at Rita's at four," Kael said.

"I was at Rita's at four. Lily was at Delphine's until six. Then I picked her up and brought her to Rita's because Rita said it was okay, she likes Lily, and I was only there twenty minutes before I left and drove to you."

"So whoever took this photo was sitting in Rita's booth at some point in the last twenty minutes of your shift."

"I dropped a plate."

"What?"

"I dropped a plate at table six. The booth. The one on the right. I didn't drop it. There was a guy. In the lot. Black sedan. He held up his hand."

"And there was a man inside at table six."

I thought about it.

"I didn't see anyone at table six," I said. "I was carrying four plates and I dropped them."

"There's no one in the frame."

"Then who took the picture?"

"The person holding the phone."

I sat there.

"Somebody in the diner took a picture of my daughter and sent it to me from my mother's phone."

"Yeah."

"So that means she was there. She was in the same room as Lily."

"Yeah."

I got out of bed. I didn't know I was going to. I just stood up and walked to the living room and started checking the locks.

"Ella."

"The window," I said. "The kitchen window."

"Ella."

"It sticks. I have a piece of wood in the track but it's not — "

"Ella." His voice was flat and hard and I stopped. "Listen to me. Nobody's coming through a window tonight. There's a man on your roof. There's a car on the south corner. My guy's across the street. Nobody's coming through your window."

I put my hand on the kitchen counter.

"I can't do this again," I said. And my voice broke.

"Ella."

"I can't. I can't do it. I can't run again. I can't put her in a car seat and drive to another town and change my name and get another job and start over. I can't. I'm so tired."

He was quiet.

"Tell me what you're going to do," he said.

"What?"

"Tonight. Right now. Tell me what you're going to do."

I looked at my apartment. My tiny apartment. The crib. The secondhand couch. The piece of wood in the window track.

"I'm gonna sit down on the floor in my daughter's room," I said, "with my back against the crib, and I'm gonna hold my phone, and I'm not gonna sleep."

"No," Kael said. "You're gonna do something else."

"What?"

"You're gonna walk to the door and you're gonna unlock it and you're gonna leave it unlocked and you're gonna sit down on the floor with your back against the wall and you're not gonna look at the door. And in about four minutes you're gonna hear it open. And it's gonna be me. And you're not gonna scream. And you're not gonna get up. And I'm gonna sit down across the hallway with my back against the other wall and we're gonna be there all night. And nobody's gonna come through that door."

I stood there with the phone at my ear.

"You're on the roof."

"I'm coming down."

"Kael — "

"Four minutes."

He hung up.

---

Four minutes.

I did what he said. I unlocked the door. I sat down on the floor in the hallway — the little hallway between my bedroom and the living room, the one with the coat hook and the shoes by the door — and put my back against the wall. My knees were up. My phone was in my hand.

I didn't look at the door.

Three minutes. Then four. Then I heard it.

The knob turning. The door swinging open. Boots on the linoleum. Slow. Careful.

He sat down across the hallway with his back against the other wall. His cut was on. His hair was wet again. He had blood on his knuckles.

"You're bleeding," I said.

"Not mine."

"Kael."

"It's not mine."

"Then whose is it?"

He didn't answer.

I looked at the blood on his knuckles and then at his face and I said, "Did you find the car?"

"Yeah."

"Was there someone in it?"

"Yeah."

"Did they run?"

"Yeah."

"Did you catch them?"

Kael looked at me.

"Partially," he said.

---

We sat there for a while.

Him across the hall. Me by the door. Every once in a while a car went by outside and the light moved across the ceiling.

"Kael."

"Mm."

"Why are you doing this."

"You asked me that already."

"I know."

"You want a different answer."

"I want the real one."

Kael was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "Because when I was nine years old I sat in a hallway a lot like this one and listened to a woman die in the next room and I couldn't do anything about it. And I've been doing something about it ever since."

I looked at him.

"That's not an answer," I said.

"It's the answer."

"That's a trauma response, Kael, that's not — "

"Ella."

"What."

"Go to sleep."

"I can't."

"Then close your eyes."

---

I closed my eyes. I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough that the floor got cold. Long enough that my neck started to hurt. And at some point I must have drifted because I woke up to a sound.

The door at the end of the hallway.

The front door.

Someone was trying the knob.

Very slow. Very quiet. Turn. Release. Turn. Release.

I opened my eyes.

Kael was already standing. He didn't make a sound. He put one hand out to me — flat. Stay.

Then he walked to the door. Put his ear against it.

Another turn of the knob.

He opened it.

I closed my eyes and held my breath.

I heard him go out into the hallway. I heard the quiet steps. I heard nothing at all for maybe ten seconds.

Then I heard a woman's voice say, "Is she okay?"

And Kael's voice say, "Who are you?"

"I think you already know who I am."

I got up.

I walked to the door on legs that weren't my own and I looked out into the hallway of my building.

A woman was standing there.

Forty-eight, maybe. Blonde going gray. Thin. Wearing a coat that was too big and a scarf that was too thin and eyes —

Eyes exactly like mine.

I said, "Mom?"

She said, "Ella Rae."

And then I heard Kael's voice, flat and cold, say, "She's holding a photo. It's from the diner tonight."

My mother didn't look at him.

She looked at me.

"Ella," she said. "I need to tell you what I was paid to do."

Chapter 8 Ends.