Nina had expected to recognize her reply. She had read it the morning before. What she hadn't expected was the handwriting beneath it.
Beth had written the date she received it and the name of the person she called afterward. Beneath that, another date. Another name. The bottom margin was full. When she'd run out of room, she'd continued up one side.
Nina could read the first few words of a line that disappeared into a fold. He says it can't be reopened unless—
“I saw this at work,” she said.
“My notes?”
“No. The reply.”
“Then look at the other side.”
Beth had printed the exchange double-sided. On the back was her own message: the wrong date, the repeated phrase, the request to call her. The sheet felt thin in Nina's hands, worn where it had been folded and unfolded. She put it flat on the table so she wouldn't tear it.
“I asked you to call me,” Beth said.
“I know.”
“You didn't.”
“No.”
The curtain shifted as someone went past outside. Nina looked toward it. A shadow crossed the gap and continued on.
Beth watched her watch it.
“You get tired of that,” she said. “Not tired enough to stop.”
Nina turned back.
Beth rubbed the mark near her collar. “They told me it had been reviewed. Independent of the people I was complaining about. That was the point, wasn't it?”
“It was.”
“He found us.”
Nina looked at her. She had known this in the incomplete way Adam had allowed her to know it: Beth had needed to leave, Martin had tried to find her, things had gone wrong. She didn't know how much Beth would make her see.
“They sent him the forwarding information. He went to the room first. I was at work. The woman who answered told him where I worked.” Beth pulled her cuff down and pushed it back up. “I used to cut hair. You can't just get up and leave a person with half a head done.”
She gave a small, horrible laugh.
“I saw him in the mirror. At first I thought I'd got his face stuck in my head. Then the door opened.”
Nina took her hands off the paper.
“What did he do?”
“Wanted to talk. Always wanted to talk. Wouldn't leave until I did. My boss said take him outside. As if I'd invited him.”
Beth picked at a loose thread on the cuff. It held, and she broke it with her teeth.
“He was telling the woman in the chair things about me. Nothing you could call a threat. Little jokes. She was looking at me in the mirror too, and I had the scissors in my hand. I remember being afraid she'd think I was going to cut her.”
She stopped. Nina waited.
“I put them down. Asked somebody to finish. Went outside with him because everybody wanted the room back the way it was before he came in.”
“Did you call for help?”
Beth's eyes met hers.
“I called people. Some helped. My boss said I could take the afternoon. A friend let us stay. That doesn't stop him knowing where I work.”
“No.”
“I didn't go back. I didn't tell her where I'd gone either. Theo went to school the next day, and Martin was waiting near there. We moved again.”
Nina looked at the empty bed. The boy's paper street was gone; a small twist of foil lay near the leg of the table. He'd missed it when he packed.
“How long was he out?”
“Which time?”
There was no answer she could supply to that.
“Did you send him the address?” Beth asked.
“No. I recommended resolving the disputed contact. The property company took the hold off after that. I haven't seen their full exchange.”
“Your name was what they gave me.”
“Yes.”
“And you wrote this.”
Nina looked down at the line she'd added herself. A helpful explanation. A reason Beth should accept the review.
“Yes.”
Beth sat back. “You're going to tell me you didn't know.”
“I didn't know who supplied the field work. That it was Adam. I knew what you were saying about it.”
The television screen reflected the two of them, one seated on the bed, the other bent toward the table. Nina had the absurd thought that somebody coming in would suppose they were filling out a form.
“I could have kept it open,” she said. “Called you. I decided the repetition was a template problem.”
“So why didn't you call?”
Her old answer arrived ready and fluent. Repeated wording was common. People copied dates. Real lives were full of errors that frightened staff turned into reasons to refuse someone. Nina had taught reviewers not to do that. She had wanted them to stop waiting for perfect evidence that would never come.
She had wanted her method to be right.
“I thought I knew what kind of mistake it was.”
“You did know. I told you.”
“You told me.”
The kettle clicked off. Neither of them had switched it on; Beth must have done it before Nina came in, then forgotten. She stood, poured water into a paper cup and set it on the table without adding anything.
“He was good at finding the person who'd say yes,” she said. “Martin. Not everybody. Just one at a time. One who'd believe him, one who'd give him a phone number, one who'd say I was making it difficult.”
Nina didn't try to distinguish herself from the line of people in Beth's account. She hadn't meant to hurt her. It was possible to keep that fact and still stop offering it as an answer.
“Is that the complaint he used?” Beth asked. “To get you to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it is.”
“He knew my name.”
“He'd keep the receipt. Martin kept everything that worked.”
Nina thought of the note he had given her, softened by her own hands now. He'd selected what she would want to hear. His account was incomplete, dangerous and useful. She had taken it to the one person whose touch would make it bearable.
She couldn't decide all of Adam here. That was another conversation she had allowed to stand in front of Beth for too long.
“Can I keep a copy?” she asked, lifting a corner of the sheet.
“Not that one.”
Nina put it down. Beth folded it herself and slid it into the pouch beneath her sweatshirt. The motion was quick, practiced. Nothing had been recovered or restored. Beth had kept the paper through everything Nina had not witnessed.
“I'm going to tell the officer about my recommendation,” Nina said. “What I could have done. Not just what Adam told me.”
Beth picked up the cup and put it down again. “You can do that without me.”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
Nina went outside. Adam was sitting on the low step near the car. He began getting up and stopped when he saw she wasn't coming toward him.
She called the officer. When he answered, she told him the particular things Beth had agreed to discuss with her and separated them from what Nina had herself seen: the old warning, her own rationale, the source she had treated as independent. She said the complete client action was still beyond the records she could access. She didn't try to make uncertainty sound like innocence.
He asked where the reply was. Nina said Beth held her copy. He asked whether Beth would speak to him about it. Nina looked toward the closed door.
“You'll need to ask her.”
“I will.”
He confirmed that Theo and Iris had arrived. Hearing it from him eased something Nina hadn't realized she was still holding. He asked when Beth intended to join her son. Nina said she would ask, not that she would bring her by a time of her own choosing.
“And your husband?”
Nina looked at Adam. He was studying the pavement between his feet.
“He's here. He's admitted doing some of the field corroboration. He says he has records. I haven't seen them.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“Yes.”
She crossed the lot and held out the phone. Adam took it. She didn't tell him what to say.
While he spoke she stood beside the car. A small piece of paper was caught beneath a wiper, a parking notice from somewhere they'd been before this morning. She left it there. In the back seat lay Theo's abandoned shoelace, a spare one, bright white against the dark upholstery. He had carried a whole box of foil people and left behind a thing he could actually wear. She understood the choice better than she'd understood it before.
Adam returned the phone.
“I'll give him what I have,” he said.
“Do it.”
“I need to get it.”
“Then get it. Don't come back with another explanation instead.”
He nodded. For once he didn't try to improve the next minute.
Nina took the car keys from her pocket and looked at them. She'd been carrying them since the escape. Adam had let her, and she hadn't asked what that cost him because it would become one more little thing he could offer in place of the truth.
“Not this car,” she said. “Beth may need it.”
“I can get a ride.”
“Don't send anybody here.”
He looked up. “I won't.”
She held his gaze until he understood that no part of that was a request for reassurance. Then she went back to the room.
Beth stood by the window holding Theo's spare battery. Her phone was on the table, the screen lit with his name. She turned it over when Nina entered, not hiding it quickly, simply ending what belonged to her before beginning what belonged to them.
“He got there,” Nina said.
“He called.”
“Iris will stay while you're on your way.”
“She told me.”
Nina set the car keys on the table. “I can drive you. Or someone else can. I'm not asking you to get in with Adam.”
Beth glanced at the keys. “I need my bag first.”
“The one from this morning?”
“No. My things. Somewhere else.”
Nina sat down. She could feel the afternoon waiting on the other side of the curtains: the street, the next door, the next person who might decide which account of Beth was easier to accept. Her first impulse was to make a route, set a time, turn the whole day into a sequence that could be completed.
Instead she put her own bag on the floor, out of the chair beside her.
“Tell me where,” she said.