Chapter 19
The Decision to Return
Nora refused to leave the facility.
She said the clinic would find her if she moved and that she had survived for seven years by making herself too ordinary to retrieve. Daniel promised protection. Nora laughed at him.
“Protection is what the program called the room,” she said.
Claire wrote down the name of the nurse who had signed the old settlement. Nora stopped her hand.
“Do not write names where machines can read them.”
“The machines are everywhere.”
“Then write the truth in a place they cannot predict.”
Nora took a pen and wrote on the inside of Claire's wrist.
RETURN TO THE ROOM WITH NO WINDOW.
The ink was blue.
Outside, a black SUV waited across the street.
Daniel saw it too.
“We leave now.”
They exited through the laundry corridor. Tess carried the cassette recorder. Claire carried the empty envelope. Daniel kept one hand near his weapon and the other on his phone.
The SUV did not follow until they reached the highway.
It followed for eight miles, then disappeared at a gas station.
“They want us to know they can,” Tess said.
“Or they lost us,” Daniel answered.
“You keep choosing the explanation that makes them competent.”
“Competent people are easier to survive.”
Claire thought of the woman who had stood in the corridor with a paper cup. Her movements had been careful, almost childlike, but the words she used were not. A person could learn to appear fragile. A person could be trained to invite protection.
“We return to Cabin 12 tonight,” Claire said.
Daniel looked at her. “No.”
“The room with no window is there.”
“The building is watched.”
“So is the courthouse. So is my house.”
“Then we find another way.”
“There is no other way. The file says the subject remembers when the replacement is nearby.”
Tess stared at Claire's wrist. “What happens if the replacement is not nearby?”
Claire did not answer.
They stopped at a diner outside town. The windows reflected the parking lot, the highway, and the black shape of the sky. Daniel ordered coffee for everyone. Nobody drank it.
“You have to tell me about your wife,” Claire said.
He looked down at the cup.
“Her name was Elise. She had a stroke after Rowan was born. The clinic said the treatment would restore language. Instead, it restored habits without meaning. She remembered how to set the table but not why our daughter needed a chair.”
“What happened to Rowan?”
“She disappeared from the records.”
“Did she disappear from your house?”
Daniel's silence returned.
“You let them take her,” Claire said.
“I thought she was a model.”
“She was a child.”
“I know that now.”
“When did you find out?”
“When Elise died. Mara showed me the file.”
“And then?”
“Then she told me the only way to get Rowan back was to keep the records sealed.”
Tess pushed her coffee away. “Your wife lied to you, Mara lied to you, and you signed whatever they put in front of you.”
Daniel did not defend himself.
Claire looked toward the road.
On the far side of the parking lot, a woman in a cream sweater stood beside the ice machine.
The woman with Claire's face.
She held a paper cup.
The cup was empty.
Claire stood.
The woman lifted her hand and pointed toward the north road.
Then she mouthed two words.
Bring Mara.