“Grace.”
A pause.
“Who’s dead?”
“No one. But Emily is in the hospital.”
Silence.
Then Grace said, “Pregnant?”
I closed my eyes.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“How?”
“Because Mother called me two months ago asking whether I still had contacts at a women’s clinic in Chelsea.”
Emily stared at me from the bed.
“Grace,” I said carefully, “what did she do?”
My sister exhaled. Across the line, I heard a child laughing faintly in the background, then a door closing.
“She did what she always does. She found the softest place in someone’s life and pressed until they mistook pain for fate.”
“Did she do this to you?”
Another silence.
“Not over the phone,” Grace said. “Not after seven years.”
“I need the truth.”
“No, Lucas. You need to decide whether you can survive hearing it.”
Before I could answer, Marcus appeared in the doorway.
His face told me something was wrong.
I ended the call with Grace only after she made me promise to call back from a secure phone. Then I turned to Marcus.
“The apartment was empty,” he said.
Emily pushed herself upright. “Empty?”
“No furniture. No clothes. No dishes. The building manager said a moving company came at six this morning with signed authorization.”
“That’s impossible,” Emily said. “I didn’t sign anything.”
Marcus held up a plastic evidence sleeve.
Inside was a single pale blue tile, cracked neatly in half.
“They knew where to look,” he said. “The notebook was gone.”
Emily’s face lost what little color it had regained.
I moved toward her, then stopped, remembering she had not invited comfort.
She pressed one hand to her mouth.