Chapter 3 - The Fifty-First Message
David stopped fighting the troopers.
“What fifty calls?”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because I could not understand how a human being could erase reality so completely when it became inconvenient.
“My calls.”
His forehead creased.
“Maya, you call me constantly.”
“I called you fifty times from the ICU.”
His arrogance disappeared.
“What ICU?”
I looked at him.
For fourteen days, I had imagined this moment.
I had imagined screaming.
Slapping him.
Throwing something.
Instead, I felt almost nothing.
“Lily’s.”
David blinked.
Then he shook his head.
“No.”
Julianne covered her mouth.
David stared at me.
“What happened to Lily?”
I did not answer immediately.
He stepped forward until the trooper tightened his grip.
“Maya.”
“Where is my daughter?”
My daughter.
He suddenly remembered those words.
I looked toward the enormous front windows.
Rain streaked the glass.
It looked exactly like the rain that had fallen over the cemetery.
“Lily died twelve days ago.”
David’s face emptied.
“No.”
“She died from meningitis.”
“No.”
“She was in intensive care for almost forty-eight hours.”
He shook his head harder.
“You’re lying.”
Agent Cole’s expression hardened.
“Mr. Vance.”
“You need to listen.”
David ignored him.
“Maya, where is she?”
“Rosewood Cemetery.”
His mouth opened.
No sound came out.
I reached into my coat pocket and removed my phone.
I had promised myself I would never play the message.
But promises made beside tiny white caskets are sometimes changed by the living.
“There were fifty calls.”
I unlocked the screen.
“And one message.”
David stared at the phone.
“What message?”
“The fifty-first attempt.”
I pressed play.
Lily’s weak little voice filled the hollow house.
“Daddy?”
David’s entire body went still.
“I know you’re resting.”
A breath.
Then a tiny cough.
“Mommy says you need quiet.”
David’s eyes filled.
“Daddy, I feel really sick.”
Another pause.
“Can you come home?”
Julianne began crying silently.
The message continued.
“I won’t bother you.”
“I promise.”
“I just want you here.”
Then Lily whispered the final words.
“I love you, Daddy.”
The recording ended.
Nobody moved.
David stared at the floor.
He looked as though someone had removed all the bones from his body.
“I didn’t hear that.”
I swallowed.
“No.”
“You rejected it.”
His head rose.
“What?”
“The hospital nurse watched me call.”
“The first twenty-seven times rang.”
“After that, your phone started rejecting the calls immediately.”
David looked toward Julianne.
She stepped backward.
“Don’t look at me.”
“You had your phone the whole time.”
David whispered.
“I was on detox.”
Agent Cole opened another page in the folder.
“That statement may become important.”
David looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because satellite internet records from the yacht show your phone connected to the network seventy-three times during those two days.”
David stopped breathing.
Agent Cole continued.
“Someone using your credentials also approved three offshore transfers while your daughter was dying.”
I watched David’s face.
The grief was still there.
But underneath it, something colder appeared.
Fear.
Because the investigation was no longer about what David had ignored.
May you like
It was about what he had been doing instead.
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