Chapter 9: The Man with the Open Hands

We froze. The bell rang again, long and insistent, and the sound seemed to crawl up the walls.

“Don’t answer it,” Natalie breathed.

“Who is it?”

She crept to the door on bare feet and put her eye to the peephole. After a moment her shoulders dropped, and I couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or more afraid. “It’s Vanessa.”

My stomach turned over. “Vanessa?”

“She’s alone. And she’s crying, Amelia. She looks terrible.”

I walked to the door as if I were underwater. Natalie slid the chain off, and my sister stumbled into the apartment in a stained grey hoodie, with unwashed hair and mascara cutting two black rivers down her cheeks. She looked like she was eleven years old again, the time she’d lost her bracelet and cried until Dad let her stay up.

“Amelia.” Her voice was hoarse. “Please. They took Dad.”

I should have been angry. I had rehearsed that anger all day, in the guesthouse, on the freeway, in the dark of Unit 14. But the sight of her small, shaking shoulders undid something in me, and I found myself steering her toward the sofa with an arm around her.

Natalie brought a glass of water. Vanessa gulped it down so fast she coughed, and then the story came out in broken pieces. Two men in the house that afternoon. A grey suit and a black one. Mum arrived late, shouting. A car in the driveway with the engine running, and Dad walking out between them with his hands in his pockets like he was going for a stroll.

“He told me not to follow,” she whispered. “He told me to go to my room.”

“Did you see their faces?” I asked.

“One of them. The tall one. He asked about you.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “He said, ‘Where’s the other girl?’”

“The other girl.”

“Like I was nothing. Like I was just—” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “Amelia, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

“For what?”

She stared at her hands.

“Vanessa, look at me. The laptop. The transfer. Tell me what happened.”

For a long moment I thought she wouldn’t answer. Her mouth opened, then shut. When she spoke it was so soft I could hardly hear it. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t mine to say.”

“Whose is it?”

She didn’t answer. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the truth out of her. She was my sister and my best friend, the person I’d stayed up with until three in the morning before every exam. And she’d sat on that sofa and watched my father throw me out, crying into a tissue, while relief shone through her face like a lamp.

The doorbell rang again.

Vanessa flinched so hard she knocked the water glass off the coffee table. It rolled across the carpet without breaking. Natalie crept back to the peephole and went rigid.

“There’s a man out there. I don’t know him. Suit. Not either of the ones Vanessa described.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yeah.” She pressed her ear to the door. “He says… he says he’s got something from Ruth Coker.”

My breath stopped in my throat.

“Open it,” I said.

“Amelia—”

“Open the door, Natalie.”

She undid the lock. A man stepped over the threshold and no farther. He was in his late twenties, tall and lean in a rumpled navy suit, with warm brown eyes and tired, careful hands. He stood in the hallway light and raised both palms where we could see them, the way you might approach a nervous horse.

“Ms. Coker. My name is Mason Brooks. I’m an attorney.” He laid a business card on the hall table, then stepped back as if to show he meant no harm. “Your grandmother retained my firm eight years ago. I should have found you sooner. I’m sorry.”

“Prove it,” Natalie said flatly.

He took out a California State Bar card, then a worn envelope. His hands were steady, but I noticed a faint tremor in the left one, and a long scratch across the knuckles, as if he’d climbed a fence. I recognised the handwriting at once: the same slanting, old-fashioned script as the letter on the church wall. For Amelia, to be opened only by her. Natalie read both, glanced at me, and gave a small nod.

“Mr. Brooks,” I said. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve watched your father’s house for two weeks. Someone else has been watching it too.” His eyes flicked to Vanessa. “I followed a grey Land Cruiser to San Pedro this afternoon. I saw you run from the unit, and I made a guess about where you’d go.”

“You were following me.”

“Protecting you, I hope. Though I understand if it doesn’t feel that way.”

“She spoke about you often,” he added gently. “She kept a photograph in her purse and showed it to every nurse who came through her ward. She said you had her mother’s chin.” He gave a small, rueful smile. “I told her that there was no way to find someone. She said it was the only way she had.”

My throat ached. Natalie’s arms were still folded, and her eyes never left his face, but she had stopped guarding the door.

His voice was soft and level, and he looked at my face as though the sight pained him. I wanted very badly to trust him. I was so tired of being afraid.

“I can give you names,” he said. “People who knew your birth mother, and where some of them might be found. But not here. That Land Cruiser will circle back.”

“Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“Because your grandmother paid me to keep one promise.” His gaze held mine. “To bring you home.”

Behind me, Vanessa made a small sound, like air leaving a tyre. I turned. She was staring at Mason with a look I couldn’t name, her face the colour of paper, backing away until she hit the arm of the sofa.

“Vanessa?”

“I have to go.”

“What? Why?”

“I just—” She snatched up her bag, fumbling the strap. “I can’t be here. Amelia, don’t trust him. Don’t trust anyone!”

“Vanessa, wait!”

But she was already through the door. Her footsteps clattered down the stairwell, quick and uneven. Natalie started after her, and Mason put out a hand and gently caught her sleeve.

“Let her go. She’ll go where she’s going.” He glanced at me, and then at the window. “Ms. Coker, we should leave. Now.”

I took the USB drive from the laptop. I took the envelope, my bag, and my mother’s ten thousand dollars. Natalie put on her shoes without being asked.

At the door I stopped. “One question, Mr. Brooks. If you’ve been watching my father’s house for two weeks, you know who took him.”

Mason did not answer at once. When he did, his face had gone very still.

“I know who wants to be the one who did.”