Chapter 5 - The Camera Across the Hall
Police reached Margaret's house within minutes.
Eric wasn't there.
Neither was Margaret.
Her car remained in the driveway.
Her purse sat on the kitchen counter.
The back door was open.
For twenty-three minutes, I believed Eric had taken her.
Then Detective Hale discovered the truth.
Eric had never been released.
He was still in custody.
The man's voice on Margaret's phone wasn't Eric.
It only sounded like him.
That meant someone else had entered her house.
Someone Margaret recognized—or feared.
Security footage from across the street showed Margaret leaving through the backyard with a hooded figure.
She wasn't dragged.
She walked voluntarily.
At 2:00 a.m., she returned.
Alone.
And finally told police everything.
The man was Eric's father.
Thomas Lawson.
The man Eric had told me died twelve years ago.
Another family ghost who wasn't dead.
Thomas had left after years of volatile behavior.
Margaret secretly maintained contact.
She had spent decades hiding one man's behavior, then repeated the pattern with his son.
Thomas had learned about Eric's arrest and returned.
Not to threaten Margaret.
To warn her.
He knew about the recording.
And he wanted her to surrender it.
The recording was recovered the next morning.
It contained Eric threatening Anna eight years earlier.
No dramatic confession.
No perfect movie evidence.
Something more believable.
His voice.
Her fear.
Margaret telling Anna not to provoke him.
The same words.
Almost exactly.
When Anna heard it, she finally agreed to meet me.
We sat across from each other in a quiet advocacy center.
She was thirty-six.
Brown hair.
Gentle eyes.
Nothing like the ghost Margaret had created.
"I saw your picture," Anna said.
"In the storage unit?"
She nodded.
"I knew what Margaret was doing."
"Why didn't you contact me?"
"I tried."
My heart stopped.
"When?"
"Before your wedding."
She had sent a message.
Eric intercepted it.
She sent a letter.
Margaret returned it.
She came to our building after Lily was born.
That's when she convinced Walter to let her listen from his apartment.
"I needed to know you were okay."
"You heard us."
Anna looked down.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you call police earlier?"
"I should have."
Her eyes filled.
"I kept thinking I needed proof."
I understood that more than she knew.
Fear made people believe they needed permission to trust what they saw.
Anna had finally placed a small recording device near the hole connecting Walter's apartment to our closet.
That's why her voice had appeared on my emergency call.
When Eric's anger escalated, Anna had whispered without realizing my phone would capture it.
Don't do this again.
She wasn't speaking to him.
She was speaking to herself.
Telling herself not to stand by again.
"I called too," she said.
"The police?"
She nodded.
My silent emergency call and Anna's call had reached dispatch almost simultaneously.
Two women.
One inside.
One outside.
Both finally refusing silence.
But there was one mystery left.
The photograph of me from three years before I met Eric.
Anna hadn't taken it.
Eric hadn't.
Margaret denied taking it.
Detectives examined metadata from other photographs.
Most were printed from digital files.
One device had created dozens of them.
A camera registered to Thomas Lawson.
Eric's supposedly dead father.
Hale called me that afternoon.
"We found Thomas."
"Where?"
"At Margaret's."
"Did he explain the photograph?"
"Yes."
I waited.
"He says Margaret is lying."
"About what?"
"About choosing you."
My stomach tightened.
"Then who did?"
Hale paused.
"Thomas says Eric saw you first."
Three years before our official meeting.
Eric had seen me outside that coffee shop.
He had asked his father to photograph me.
The charity fundraiser wasn't our first meeting.
It was merely the first time I knew he was there.
I felt the room tilt.
"Why would Margaret lie?"
"That's what we're determining."
That evening, I received another unknown text.
This one contained a photograph.
My wedding day.
I was standing outside the church.
But the picture had been taken from far away.
Underneath it was a message:
HE WATCHED LONGER THAN YOU KNOW.
Then another image arrived.
Me carrying groceries.
Before our marriage.
Another.
Jenna and me outside her apartment.
Another.
My hands began shaking.
Then the final photograph loaded.
It wasn't old.
It had been taken that morning.
It showed Jenna walking into the advocacy center where Lily and I were staying.
I called Hale immediately.
He answered on the first ring.
Before I could speak, someone knocked on our door.
Three slow knocks.
Jenna looked at me.
Nobody was supposed to know where we were.
May you like
The handle moved.
And someone on the other side whispered my name.
