Chapter 10 - THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS
I called Robert despite our argument.
Whatever I was angry about, I trusted him to take danger seriously.
He asked me to stay with Ruth and contact the police if I believed Wade was in immediate danger.
He was on his way with Evelyn.
Twenty minutes later Wade's neighbor called.
She had heard glass breaking and seen someone leaving the back door.
The police arrived before we did.
Wade was sitting on the curb with a cut above one eyebrow.
Fallon was nowhere in sight.
He refused an ambulance until a paramedic convinced him to accept treatment.
When he saw me, his face twisted.
“Mom, I told you not to come.”
“I came because you sounded afraid.”
“I didn't want you involved.”
Robert stood several feet away, making no move to confront him.
A detective asked whether anything valuable was missing.
Wade said a laptop and a box of files had been taken.
The broken glass lay inside the kitchen, near the back door.
Evelyn quietly pointed out that the investigators would need to determine how the break-in occurred.
Nobody accused anyone of staging it.
Nobody ruled it out.
The kitchen still smelled of the expensive candles Fallon burned whenever guests visited.
On the counter sat a bowl of oranges and a handwritten seating plan for a dinner that had never happened.
My name was missing again.
I almost laughed at the cruelty of it.
Wade watched me looking.
“Fallon made that,” he said.
“Of course she did.”
He swallowed.
“She says if I tell the truth, we both go down.”
“Tell what truth?”
He shook his head.
“I signed some papers I shouldn't have.”
“Which papers?”
“I don't know everything.”
I wanted to embrace him.
I also wanted to shake him until he understood the cost of his excuses.
Instead, I said, “Then start finding out.”
The detective returned with a phone sealed in an evidence bag.
It had been found beneath a broken dining chair.
The screen lit briefly with a message from Marianne Vale.
THE OLD MAN WILL COME LOOKING FOR HIS WIFE.
The detective looked from the message to Robert.
Robert's face lost all color.
Then the phone rang.
The caller ID showed FALLON.
Wade closed his eyes.
“She's not missing,” he said.
May you like
“She's waiting.”
