271.🕰️ THE SECOND ROOM

Chapter 06 - Someone Knocking from the Other Side

The second figure in the hallway recording was too small to be a man.

At first I thought it was Emily. I felt the floor tilt beneath me. Then the figure turned, and the grainy camera showed a narrow elderly face framed by a blue wool scarf.

"Violet," Claire said.

Her mother.

I had met Violet twice. She was a reserved woman who never asked for second helpings and always brought a small jar of jam as a thank-you gift. I knew she had moved to Vermont. Yet there she stood in our hallway at midnight, walking with a cane.

"You said she was with your sister."

"She is now. She came down for one night because Martin called her. I didn't know until she arrived."

On the video Violet placed her ear against the clock and knocked three times. A minute later she bent to pick up something pushed through a crack at the base: a folded white paper.

Claire moved beside her. Together they examined it, then hurried toward the kitchen.

"What's on that paper?" Ada asked.

Claire went upstairs without answering. When she returned she carried a red sweater. She took a note from its pocket and placed it on the table.

In my father's handwriting were seven words: THERE ARE TWO OF US. CALL DANIEL.

I looked at Claire. "You had this?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't call me?"

"I did. That night. Three times."

I pulled out my phone, opened the recent calls and scrolled. There had been three calls while I was meeting contractors in Pittsburgh. All missed. I had sent a text afterward: Can't talk. On site. Everything okay?

Her reply had been: Please call when you can.

I hadn't.

That didn't excuse what she did next. Nothing did. But it made my righteous anger harder to wear.

"After you didn't answer," Claire said, "Violet wanted to call the police. Peter arrived before she could. He said Martin knew about the note and that if we made a report, they would say Walter had assaulted someone at the care facility. He showed her documents they'd prepared. False ones, but she was frightened."

"So you let him walk away?"

"I told Peter there were two people behind the door. He said a locksmith would come at daylight. I didn't believe him. I tried the clock myself. I couldn't reach the screws with my tools. Then I went next door for help, but Ruth was out."

"And when Emily asked?"

"I thought she was talking about her imaginary friends. Until yesterday."

Ada held up a hand. "We're not going to argue our way into a useful chronology. Claire, every step you took that night needs to go in your statement. Including your delay. Especially that."

Claire nodded. I saw shame settle over her shoulders like a garment she'd stopped trying to take off.

Before I left, I asked Ruth to take Emily for a walk past the river. Ruth had raised three sons and was too sensible to indulge my desire for simple reassurances. She told me Emily had been waking at night and checking whether her bedroom door opened from the inside. I made a call to have every unfamiliar lock in the house examined, then went upstairs and sat beside Emily as she put on her shoes.

"You can tell me if something frightens you," I said.

She studied a loose thread on her sleeve. "Even if it makes Claire sad?"

"Especially then. The truth doesn't make you responsible for how adults feel."

"I didn't want anyone to be angry at her," Emily said. "I just wanted the coughing to stop."

I put an arm around her shoulders. "You helped. And it wasn't your job to do it alone."

She rested her head against me for one brief moment, then ran downstairs when Ruth called. I watched her go and understood that protection wouldn't be proven by whatever I said that day. It would be proven by coming back and saying it again tomorrow.

I drove to the hospital before dark. My father was awake with a paper cup of tea. He watched me come in and said, "You've read the ledger."

"I have."

He put down the cup. "I was going to tell you."

"You had five years."

"The company would have failed. Families would have lost their wages. I borrowed it and put it back. I thought that made it right."

"Did Nora agree?"

"No. I didn't ask her."

I stared at him. For weeks I'd wanted one person to be entirely innocent and one person to be entirely guilty. It was beginning to look as if life had no intention of arranging itself for my convenience.

"Martin found out," my father said. "He helped prepare the repayment. Then he kept a copy of every page. When the developers approached him last year, he told me I could either cooperate or watch you lose the business and the trust."

"He couldn't legally take the houses because you borrowed money."

"I know that now. I didn't then. And I was afraid you would find out how badly I'd let your mother down."

"You let her down by keeping it a secret."

My father's eyes filled. For the first time I understood that his pride, which I'd admired all my life, could be a form of fear.

"What happened before you went into the clock?" I asked.

He told me he had been taken to a small private care home after a routine fall. He was given medication that made him groggy. A visiting physician made notes without examining him properly. On the eighth day, an orderly named Samuel had helped him leave when his symptoms cleared and he realized the papers describing him were false.

"Samuel drove me to the old service entrance," Dad said. "Nora was waiting with proof Martin had forged her resignation. We went into the passage to retrieve the old trust papers your mother kept in the pump room. Peter followed us. Martin was with him. They locked us below."

"Why not shout?"

"We did. The walls are thick. And I couldn't reach the exterior door; the old lock had rusted. We had water from the old pump line. No decent food. Then that little girl of yours brought bread through the opening."

I looked at the pale blue hospital sheet and thought of Emily listening at the clock while the grown-ups went about their business.

"Dad, someone will answer for this."

"Yes," he said. "But you'll have to make sure it's the right people."

He took an envelope from his bedside drawer. Inside was a note in the doctor's handwriting, a payment receipt and a name: Dr. Simon Larkin, owner of the private recovery home.

"Samuel saved that before I left. The doctor's statement says I was examined on the day I was inside the clock. Samuel says the doctor wasn't even in the building."

It was more evidence than I'd expected. It also meant the plot reached beyond one crooked lawyer.

I was on my way out when my father called me back.

"There's one thing you need to ask Nora."

"What?"

"Martin isn't the buyer. Northstar is just the coat. Someone else is wearing it."

"Who?"