Don’t Let Him Know I’m Still Alive

She looked at me straight on for the first time.

“Because my phone was gone,” she said. “It had been in my car console at the station lot and it was gone when I got home, and I had ten seconds in a hospital driveway to work out why, and the answer I came up with was the right one.”

She swallowed. “He took it. He was going to leave it in that kitchen. And I was going to be the woman who came to the house and did that.”

The dryer stopped. Neither of us moved.

“And the words on her back,” I said.

“I didn’t read them,” Claire said. “I saw that there were words. I didn’t read them and I don’t want to know them and Deputy Barrett has tried twice.”