Lena — Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 4:40–5:15 p.m.
Alma opened the door with a phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder. She held up one finger, then pointed Lena toward the kitchen. Someone on the phone was talking about tomorrow. Alma said she understood, twice, in different voices.
Nadia stood beside the sink. She had changed her clothes. The sweatshirt was too large through the shoulders, the sleeves pushed up until the cuffs made thick bands below her elbows. There was a plate in the water and a sandwich on the counter that had not been cut.
“She told me to eat,” Nadia said.
Lena had not asked. She put her bag beside a chair.
“Have they found her?”
“No. The comparison helped, though. They've used it for the next ground task.”
“Good.”
Nadia turned the tap off. She had left it running over the plate.
“Alma says you can sit in there.”
She indicated the small room beyond the kitchen. A television faced two chairs. There were shoes beneath one and a folded sheet over its back. Lena sat on the other. Nadia remained standing until Alma came to the doorway, still on the phone, and asked her with a movement of her head to move the shoes. She put them in the hall. Alma shut the door behind them.
“You said there was something you wanted to tell me.”
“I want to know where this goes.”
Lena waited.
“What I say. Who hears it.”
“It's part of the investigation. I can't promise to keep it between us.”
Nadia nodded immediately, as though she had expected a less direct answer and wanted to be past it.
“You can tell me now,” Lena said. “If you want somebody with you—”
“I don't want Alma.”
“All right.”
Nadia sat. For a little while the sound from the kitchen filled the room: Alma saying goodbye, the refrigerator door, a question from Tessa that went unanswered.
“When we got out,” Nadia said. “Last night.”
Lena reached for her notebook. Nadia watched her open it.
“June fell. I told you that.”
“You said she stepped badly.”
“She did. She tried to come after me and couldn't.”
Nadia took a breath through her mouth. She put one hand on her forearm, not over the mark but above it.
“She had hold of me. She wouldn't let go. I got my arm away. I was outside, and she kept coming. I mean she was trying. At the door.”
“Where were you?”
“Right there. Outside it. She pushed it back at me.”
The woman was looking at her hands now. Lena remembered her laugh at the jacket photograph.
“I shut it,” Nadia said.
Lena wrote the words, then looked up.
“It could be fastened from outside. I did that. I knew she'd be stuck in there.”
From the hall Tessa called for her aunt. Nadia went still. Alma answered, nearer than either had expected. There was a quick exchange about a charger, then footsteps moving away.
“I told her I'd come back,” Nadia said. “I told her to stay.”
Lena had the room again in her mind, the inner way and the utility-room door. She put her notebook down on her knee.
“You were trying to get away from him.”
“I was trying to get away from her too.”
Neither spoke.
“He was running toward us,” Nadia said. “I could hear him. She was saying take me. She kept reaching. I couldn't make her wait. I put it down and it caught. Then I ran.”
She wiped her palms on the sweatshirt. Her feet were flat on the carpet, close together, as if she meant to stand up without using the arms of the chair.
“You didn't tell me that this morning,” Lena said.
“I know what I told you.”
Lena got the recorder from her bag.
“I'd like to record the correction. Is that all right?”
“Do I have to say it again?”
“I need a clear account of what you did. We can take a minute.”
“I don't want a minute.”
She agreed to the recording. Lena stated who was there. Nadia described the fastening again, then said she had known the interior route was secured. She'd run, and Ray had caught her before she reached the road.
“When he brought you back?”
“She was still in there.”
“What happened then?”
“He opened it.”
Nadia stopped. Lena waited until she went on. June had not wanted her help afterward. The water and blanket were things Nadia had put down. She had told June she was trying to get her out. In the morning she had promised again.
“When I said I'd get the car. I thought he'd listen to me. And he did.”
She looked at Lena with something like impatience.
“I did ask him to call somebody. That part was true.”
“Yes.”
“I didn't make that up.”
“I'm recording what you're changing. The other things don't disappear.”
Nadia's mouth moved before she spoke. “She's out there.”
Lena did not answer as though it were a question. The recording continued with the sound of someone setting a dish down in the kitchen. Nadia asked her to stop it. Lena did, noting where they had ended.
“Does he know you told me?”
“I haven't spoken to him since you told me.”
“He thinks I wouldn't.”
She bent forward, elbows on her knees.
“I thought if you found her, she could tell you. And if you didn't—”
She stopped. Lena left the unfinished sentence where it was.
“Are you going to arrest me?” Nadia asked.
“I'm not making that decision here. I need to document your account, and it will be considered with the other evidence. I won't promise you something I can't give.”
Nadia nodded. She had already nodded once at the same warning. This time she looked at the carpet for a long time afterward.
“I don't want to see him.”
“You don't have to see him to correct your account.”
“No, I mean ever. Not so I can say what he did. I don't want him looking at me.”
Lena wrote that down too. She explained what would happen with the statement, who might need to speak to Nadia again and how to reach them. Nadia listened, asking her to repeat one name. When Lena asked whether she wanted Alma to hear any of it with her, she said no.
“I'll tell her myself.”
She got up. Lena followed her into the kitchen, where the sandwich had been covered with an upturned bowl. Tessa sat at the table with a school worksheet and a pencil whose eraser had been worn down to the metal. She was drawing something in the margin.
“Mom, this isn't for tomorrow,” she said. “It's the one you didn't sign.”
Nadia looked over her shoulder. “I can't sign it now.”
“I know. They gave me it back.”
The girl pushed it away. Alma took a small stack of papers from beside the microwave and put them in front of Nadia.
“These are for tomorrow. These you can.”
“Alma.”
“I'm not trying to—” She stopped, glancing at Lena. “School called. It's all right. They know she's here. But she's going tomorrow, if she's going.”
“I want to,” Tessa said.
“Then I need to tell them who's getting you.”
Nadia pulled out the chair beside her daughter. Tessa held on to the paper she had pushed away. Nadia touched its corner, then let it be.
“I'll get you tomorrow,” she said.
Alma put her hand flat on the counter. “We need to know that.”
Nadia looked up at her. “I said I will.”
“I heard you.”
Lena stood by the door, suddenly part of a conversation she had no useful place in. She asked whether Nadia wanted her to wait outside. Nadia said no, then asked whether the officer could still take her to the cabin tomorrow. The girl looked at her mother.
“Tomorrow morning?” Alma asked.
“After she's gone to school.”
“I can do school. I've told work I'm coming in late, not that I'm taking another day. I have to go in.”
“I know you do.”
“I'm telling you because we have to arrange it.”
Alma took her phone out and opened the message she had been answering when Lena arrived. A colleague had covered part of today. Tomorrow she could go in after the school drop-off, but she couldn't collect Tessa in the afternoon. She read the time aloud. Nadia asked which door they were using for pickup now. Tessa corrected both of them; it had changed before last week. She had told them already.
They worked through it. Nadia could return in daylight with an escort. They would make sure the school had a second person to call, and Alma would ask the person who had sometimes collected Tessa before whether she could be available if Nadia was delayed. Nadia objected to the word delayed, then took the phone when Alma held it out. She asked the question herself.
Lena waited through the brief call. Tessa rolled her pencil under one palm. The marks on the worksheet were turning into a row of small houses, all with the same square door.
“We can still go home tonight,” Nadia told her afterward.
“I want to stay here.”
Nadia looked at Alma. Her sister was taking potatoes out of a cupboard, counting them onto the counter.
“Of course you can stay,” Alma said. “But I haven't done a thing in your room. The sheets are where I left them.”
“I can do them.”
“I'll get the pillows,” Alma said.
Nadia began to cry. She turned from the table quickly, one hand over her face, and Tessa said, “Mom,” in an embarrassed, frightened voice. Alma came across with a towel before realizing what she was holding. She put it down and took her sister's hand.
Lena stepped into the hall. There was a new message from the search, a short account of ground covered, nothing found that gave June a present place. She acknowledged it. The clock on the wall was five minutes behind her phone. She had to be at the institution before half past five. She heard Alma say she could peel the potatoes or sit, whichever she wanted, and Nadia give a brief wet laugh.
When she came back, Nadia had washed her face. Tessa was reading the top form aloud, making her mother listen to what she had missed.
“The escort,” Nadia said to Lena. “Who do I ask?”
Lena gave her the contact and made sure the request went in. The officer would arrange the time directly; Nadia could still decide against it. She wanted to go, she said. She wanted to see where June had gone.
“If you want me there too, call,” Lena said. “I'll try to come for part of it.”
Nadia looked at her. “You could?”
“I can't promise the whole time.”
“I don't need you the whole time.”
She said it quickly. Lena gave her the number again though she already had it. Nadia put the card beneath the school forms, then took it out and put it in her pocket.
At the door Alma asked whether there was somebody she could call if people came to the house tonight. Lena went over the arrangements with her and wrote down the number Alma wanted by the door. Her own phone sounded while she was doing it. She finished the number before looking.
It was time to leave. Nadia had sat beside Tessa. The girl was holding a form between them and insisting on one particular sentence. Her mother bent to read it, lips moving, and asked whether she had a pen that worked.