Chapter 2 - THE SECOND PAPER
I caught Marlene before she reached the stairs.
Not violently.
I stepped into the doorway.
“No.”
“Move.”
“Where’s the other paper?”
“You have no right to search my belongings.”
“You pinned a nine-year-old child to the floor because she saw them.”
“I was trying to stop her from destroying private medical information.”
Lily shouted:
“I didn’t destroy anything!”
Marlene closed her eyes.
I held up the hospital page.
“Where is Anna?”
“She left.”
“You just said she was sick.”
“Both can be true.”
“Where did the hospital send her?”
“I don’t remember.”
Four years.
Maybe plausible.
The way she answered was not.
I reached into the purse again.
Marlene tried to stop me.
I stepped back.
“Touch me again and I call police.”
That was enough.
She froze.
Inside a zippered compartment, I found a smaller folded document.
Not hospital stationery.
A discharge-transfer authorization.
Patient:
Anna Foster Hale.
Transfer destination:
Silver Pines Neurological Rehabilitation Center.
Bend, Oregon.
Authorized family contact:
Marlene Foster.
Spouse:
ETHAN HALE — ESTRANGED / DO NOT CONTACT PER FAMILY REQUEST.
I stared.
“Estranged?”
Marlene said nothing.
“We were not separated.”
“She told me she wanted to leave you.”
“When?”
“Before the hospital.”
“Did she tell the hospital that?”
“She wasn’t in a condition to tell anyone anything.”
The sentence escaped before Marlene could stop it.
I felt cold.
“So you told them.”
“I was her mother.”
“I was her husband.”
“You were the reason she was falling apart.”
“What does that mean?”
Marlene looked at Lily.
Again.
My daughter was listening.
Enough.
I pulled out my phone.
“Lily, go downstairs.”
“No.”
“Sweetheart—”
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“She’ll take the papers.”
I looked at my nine-year-old.
She did not trust her grandmother alone in a room with evidence.
That fact mattered more than anything Marlene could say.
“Okay.”
I photographed every page.
Then the prescription bottle.
It carried Anna’s name.
Not Marlene’s.
Filled three months after Anna supposedly disappeared.
Prescriber:
Dr. Samuel Greene.
Silver Pines.
My hand tightened.
“You still had Anna’s medication?”
Marlene’s face changed.
“I kept old things.”
“For four years?”
No answer.
I called the police.
Marlene laughed once.
“What exactly are you reporting?”
I looked at Lily.
“Assault on my daughter.”
Her smile disappeared.
“And possible concealment of medical records involving my missing wife.”
Marlene sat down on Lily’s desk chair.
For the first time, she looked old.
Then she whispered:
May you like
“If you call them, you may never forgive Anna.”
That was the first time anyone suggested my wife had done something worse than leave.
