She said it so quietly I almost missed it.
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Daniel went still.
I said, “He had someone watching the house.”
“He had more than that,” she said. “Someone in county services fed him information. A caseworker. School schedules. Addresses. Anything he wanted.”
“You still could have gone farther,” I said. “You could have called state police. A reporter. Me.”
“I tried once.”
She nodded like she had said that to herself a thousand times.
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She said it so quietly I almost missed it.
“I mailed copies of two notes and part of your husband’s records to the state office. Three days later I came back here and found the envelope under a pew. Opened. Inside was a new photo of Daniel walking home.”
“After that,” she said, “I believed him.”
I still snapped, “That explains a few weeks. A few months. Not 12 years.”
“I used a different first name.”
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She nodded like she had said that to herself a thousand times. “The chapel wasn’t where I lived all that time. It was where I came back. Your husband had marked it in his notes as the one place nobody would think to search twice. I stayed here at first.” For a second, she stopped and took a breath.
“Then I moved around. Weekly motels. Cash jobs. A room over a closed bait shop for a while. An old woman in the next county thought I was hiding from a violent man and let me do laundry and sewing in exchange for food. I used a different first name. I kept waiting for a time when it would be safe.”
