Chapter 7
Claire wanted to call Martin then.
The urge was physical.
Her hand moved toward her phone before thought arrived.
Margaret stopped her gently.
“Please don’t.”
Claire pulled away.
“You don’t get to tell me not to call my father.”
The word father hung in the room.
Margaret’s face softened.
“No. I don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“But I am asking you to wait.”
“Why?”
Daniel answered, “Because if Martin knows what you know before investigators secure the next records, he may destroy or move evidence.”
Claire stared at him.
“My dad is not some criminal in a file.”
Luis said quietly, “We hope you are right.”
That sentence broke her more than certainty.
Hope meant they did not know everything.
Hope meant there was still room for one better explanation.
Hope meant there was also room for the worst.
Claire sat back down hard.
Airplanes rolled past the windows like life outside the room had no idea hers had stopped.
Margaret slid the water bottle closer.
This time Claire took it.
Her hands shook so badly the plastic crackled.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Breathe first,” Margaret said.
Claire laughed through tears.
“That’s your legal advice?”
“No. That’s human advice.”
For a second, Claire saw something in Margaret’s face.
Not just professional concern.
Old grief.
Personal grief.
“You knew someone in the Pierce family,” Claire said.
Margaret did not deny it.
“I knew enough to care what happened to Natalie.”
Claire flinched at the name.
Natalie.
A ghost wearing her face.
A baby she had been before someone renamed her.
“I’m Claire,” she whispered.
Margaret nodded.
“Yes.”
Claire looked down at the infant photograph.
“Am I?”
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No one could answer that either.
Read the full story 👉 Claire wanted to call Martin immediately, but doing so might warn the very person the investigators were still examining.
