The Woman in Blue
Chapter 08 - The Woman in Blue
For years Meredith had imagined the greatest risk to Ruth was a fall, a winter illness, or the slow erosion of memory. She knew every emergency phone number and every side effect listed on the medication chart. She had never thought anyone would look at her mother's confusion and see an opportunity.
The administrator apologized repeatedly. Meredith stopped him after the third time. "What changes tomorrow?" she asked. "That's what I need."
He agreed to verify all outside visitors, require direct confirmation from the daughters for nonemergency transfers, review the previous months' access logs, and provide staff with a photograph of Caroline. Nina asked that all steps be documented in writing. It was tedious work, full of signatures and policy language, but that was the point. Meredith had learned that cruelty often arrived dressed as paperwork. She wanted paperwork to be part of the defense as well.
In the hallway, a resident called Meredith by another woman's name and asked whether the bus had come. Meredith helped her find the lounge. For several minutes she forgot the threats and the lawyers and simply walked with an elderly woman whose slipper kept coming loose. This ordinary kindness, so far from the machinery of fraud, reminded her why she had always loved the place despite its shortcomings.
On the drive home Nina asked if she wanted to stay in Milwaukee for a while. Meredith said no. "I don't want every choice I make to be about avoiding these people." Nina nodded. She did not insist, and that too felt like care.
Meredith reached the nursing home before Caroline Price returned. Nina had spoken to an emergency legal aid contact, and Helena was petitioning the court to confirm that no transfer order was valid. Ruth sat in the recreation room with a stuffed rabbit on her lap, entirely unaware that strangers had tried to move her like furniture.
Alma brought out a photocopy of the document. It carried an impressive seal and a signature that resembled Meredith's, though the loop of the M was too careful. The text referred to a guardianship proceeding Meredith had never initiated. Nina photographed it and asked the administrator to notify local police of the attempted removal and preserve surveillance footage.
"Caroline said your mother had become unsafe here," Alma explained. "She seemed very certain. She named a physician who hasn't worked in this facility for four years. That's what made me question her."
By evening, Helena confirmed the paper had not been issued by the court. It was a fabrication. The facility barred Caroline from entry while authorities investigated. Meredith sat with Ruth until supper, listening to her mother talk about a school dance in 1968. At one point Ruth reached up and touched Meredith's cheek. "You look tired, sweetheart," she said, with the surprising accuracy that sometimes survived the illness.
"I am, Mom."
"You should get some rest. The flowers can wait."
Meredith held her hand a little longer than she usually did. She had spent years hurrying from work to care, from care to bills, wishing sometimes for a morning when no one needed anything. Now she was ashamed of that wish, though she knew it had been ordinary exhaustion rather than a lack of love.
Back in Chicago, investigators interviewed Caroline Price. She denied any wrongdoing. Victor Bellamy's lawyers released a statement describing allegations of record tampering as an effort to damage a charitable family. The language sounded so polished that Meredith wondered how much it had cost.
Peter came to the studio with news about the flash drive. Investigators had not disclosed its full contents, but Helena had received confirmation that it included copies of transfers from project accounts to a company controlled by Rusk's brother-in-law. Another folder contained audio files. One was dated the night Adrian vanished.
"Have you heard it?" Meredith asked.
"No. They won't release it while they're investigating."
Peter hesitated. "But I found another thing among my father's old papers. A letter to Colleen, written before he died. He said he was going to speak against Victor. He feared she'd try to keep the family together by keeping everyone quiet."
Meredith examined the letter. Martin had crossed out two sentences and written them again. The handwriting was anxious and unsteady, a man's private effort to say something honest before it was too late. Its final line said: OUR SONS DESERVE THE TRUTH MORE THAN THEY DESERVE OUR NAME.
She wondered what would have happened if Colleen had received that letter while Martin was alive. Perhaps she'd dismissed it. Perhaps he hadn't been brave enough to give it to her. There were always so many places where a life might have turned differently.
A few days later Sloane called from her father's old lake house. She had gone there with a friend to collect childhood photographs before Victor's lawyers changed the locks. Behind a cabinet she'd found a stack of correspondence addressed to Lucia Garza, each envelope returned unopened. The latest had a postmark from Quebec, months after Lucia disappeared.
"She's alive," Sloane said, hardly breathing. "At least she was in August."
Meredith and Helena arranged for the information to reach investigators. Then Sloane read the return address aloud. Meredith repeated it into her notebook. Something about the street name pulled at her memory. She opened an old photograph on her phone: Adrian and a woman standing beside a roadside diner, the picture he'd once said was taken during an engineering conference.
A sign over the diner's door displayed the same street name, in French.
May you like
"I know where he's been," Meredith said.
A message arrived while she was still looking at the photograph. It came from Adrian. I HAVE TO SEE YOU BEFORE THEY FIND LUCIA. THERE IS ONE THING I NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT THE NIGHT OF THE CRASH.
