Wyatt nodded.
“We’ll meet your officers there.”
Lena Morris packed away the documents.
“Sadie, we’ll place security outside your room.”
“Because Melanie is still missing?”
“Yes.”
“She won’t come here.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because she thinks I’m weak.”
The prosecutor studied me.
“And is she right?”
I looked at Wyatt.
At the torn shirt he still had not changed.
At Detective Beckett’s evidence file.
At the bandages covering the face my mother believed would destroy my future.
“No,” I said.
“She’s never been more wrong.”
By afternoon, the swelling around my eye had worsened, but my vision began to return in fragments.
Light first.
Then color.
Then the blurred outline of Wyatt’s face.
He cried when I told him I could see him.
I tried to smile, but the stitches pulled painfully.
“You look terrible,” I whispered.
He laughed through his tears.
“So do you.”
“That’s rude.”
“You started it.”
For one precious moment, the hospital room felt almost normal.
Then Detective Beckett returned carrying a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was a small brass key.
The package from my apartment had contained nothing else.
“No note?” I asked.
“No.”
“Where is the safe-deposit box?”
“Walter gave us the bank.”
“Have you opened it?”
“We need either your authorization as trust beneficiary or a warrant.”
“You have my authorization.”
Lena Morris entered behind him with papers prepared.
I signed as carefully as my trembling hand allowed.
Two hours later, Detective Beckett called from the bank.
“We opened the box.”
Wyatt put the phone on speaker.
“What was inside?” I asked.
“Financial ledgers, copies of your grandfather’s medical records, audio tapes, and photographs.”
“Photographs of what?”
“Meetings between your father and a private lender. Also several pictures of Melanie entering a pharmacy using your grandfather’s prescription card.”
My breath stopped.
“How old was she?”
“Fifteen.”
The same age I had been when Grandpa died.
Melanie had been a child.
But children could be manipulated.
Children could also lie.
“What’s on the tapes?”
“We haven’t listened to all of them.”
“All?”
“There are seventeen.”
The prosecutor’s voice came through the phone.
“One is labeled with the date two days before your grandfather’s death.”
Wyatt’s hand found mine.
“Play it,” I said.
“Sadie,” Lena warned, “you may not be ready.”
“I have spent twelve years believing a lie. Play it.”
