Chapter 5 — SHE CAME HOME AT FOUR

Corinne came home at 4:05 the following afternoon.

Twenty-two hours after she left.

I know the exact time because the camera in the garage picked her up, and because I had been sitting at the island since noon with a legal pad in front of me and a phone face down beside it.

Josie was at my mother's in Greensboro. I had driven her out that morning. Theo was asleep upstairs with the monitor on the counter.

Corinne came in through the garage door, which she always did, and stopped when she saw me.

She was in different clothes.

Jeans and a grey sweater. Her hair was up. The makeup was gone.

She had gone somewhere and changed, which meant she had had time to think, which meant whatever came out of her mouth next had been rehearsed.

"You're home."

"I am."

She put her keys in the bowl.

"I thought you were in Fayetteville until Thursday."

"I was."

She looked at the kitchen.

I had cleaned it. There was nothing on the floor and nothing on the island except my legal pad and my phone and one green crayon that I had put back exactly where it fell.

"Where are the kids?"

"Theo's asleep."

"And Josie?"

"Safe."

That word did something to her face.

"What does that mean, safe?"

"It means she's somewhere where an adult is in the building."

Corinne set her purse down slowly.

"Okay. So you're angry."

"Yes."

"Mom said you'd be angry."

"When did she say that?"

A half second.

"This morning."

"On the phone?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"Daniel—"

"What time did your mother call you this morning, Corinne?"

"I don't know. Nine? Why does that matter?"

It mattered because Judith had called me at 8:05, and at 8:16 she had told me not to talk to Corinne's work, and by nine she was coordinating.

But I did not say that.

I have learned something in eleven years of walking into buildings where somebody is stealing: you never tell them what you know. You ask them things you already have the answer to, and you watch what they choose.

"I want to ask you about last night."

"Okay." She pulled out the stool across from me and sat. "I was going to tell you—"

"Where were you?"

"Bree's."

"Bree Lindqvist?"

"Yes."

"All night?"

"Yes."

"From when?"

"I don't know, six thirty? Seven?"

"And your mother was here with the kids."

Corinne did not answer immediately.

She had to work out how much I knew, and she had one piece of information to work with: that I had come home early. She did not know why. She did not know about the cameras. She was standing at the edge of a hole in the dark trying to guess how deep.

"She was supposed to be."

Good answer.

Genuinely. It was the best available answer and she found it fast.

"Supposed to be."

"Yes. She told me she was staying. If she left, I didn't know that."

"You didn't know that."

"No."

"You left the house at 6:06 p.m. and your mother had been gone since 4:12."

Her mouth opened.

"How do you—"

"Was Josie holding Theo when you left?"

"Daniel—"

"Was she holding the baby when you walked out?"

"She likes holding him."

I want to record that sentence, because that is the one I still hear at strange times, in the truck, in the dairy aisle.

She likes holding him.

"Her shoulders are bruised."

"What?"

"Both of them. From the strap of his weight. She has a lumbar strain. We were at WakeMed until four in the morning."

Corinne's face changed and I could not read it, and I have spent a lot of time since then trying to decide whether that was because it was complicated or because there was nothing in it.

"You took them to the hospital?"

"Yes."

"Without calling me?"

I did not answer that.

"Daniel, you took my children to a hospital and didn't call me?"

"There's a report."

She went still.

"What report?"

"The nurse is a mandated reporter. Wake County has it. There's a deputy's report too. Alvarado. You'll get a call from an investigator named Nadine Okoro, probably tomorrow, and you should have a lawyer before you talk to her."

Corinne stood up.

"You called the police on me."

"I called a pediatrician's after-hours line at 12:31 in the morning because our son had gone eight hours on one cold bottle."

"You called the police—"

"The nurse called the county. That's her job. I didn't ask her to and I didn't stop her."

"You could have stopped her!"

And there it was.

The whole thing, in one sentence, before either of us had said the word Mercer.

I let it sit in the room.

Then I said, "Who's at 4471?"

She had been building toward something and it went out of her like air.

"What?"

"Account ending 4471. First transfer March 6. Two thousand dollars. Most recent transfer August 29, which emptied our savings. A hundred and eighteen thousand, four hundred out of joint checking. Five thousand, one hundred out of our daughter's account."

She did not say anything.

"That last one's the one I want to understand. Because the checking, I can build a story for. Maybe you have debt. Maybe there's something you were ashamed of. People do that, they dig a hole and then they dig faster because they think they can get out before anyone looks."

I turned the legal pad around so she could see the columns.

"But Josie's account is six hundred dollars at a time. Twelve times. Every one of those is a decision you made on a specific day, sitting down, logging in, and typing a number."

Corinne looked at the pad.

She did not look at me.

"It's not what you think."

"Tell me what it is."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll go do something."

That is not a denial.

I want to be clear about what she did in that kitchen. She did not deny it. Not once. She did not say I don't know what that is, she did not say that must be fraud, she did not say let me call the bank.

She said you'll go do something.

"Is it Grant Mercer's account?"

The name went through her like current.

"You need to be very careful," she said.

"That's an interesting response."

"Daniel, listen to me." She put both hands flat on the marble. "You don't understand the situation you're in the middle of. This is not — this is not a marriage thing. This is bigger than you and it is bigger than me and if you go stomping around—"

"You looked at the camera."

Silence.

"Last night at 6:05, you looked up at the camera in that corner and you said, by the time Daniel figures it out the accounts will be empty. You looked right at it."

She turned her head and looked at the corner above the cabinets.

I watched her work it out.

I watched her realize it in real time, which is a thing I would not wish on anybody and did not entirely enjoy.

"It's off," she said. "You turned it off. In March."

"I took it off your phone."

"You said you turned it off."

"I said I'd stop bringing it up."

She sat back down.

She sat down the way people sit down when their legs have made the decision for them.

"There's audio," she said.

"There's audio."

"How much."

"Everything since March, on a rolling thirty. Last night's is off the roll. So is the night before. So is a Thursday in July."

"What's the Thursday in July?"

I did not tell her, because I had not looked at the Thursday in July yet, and because a person who asks you which Thursday has just told you there is a Thursday worth asking about.

I said: "You should go stay with your mother."

"This is my house."

"There's a report open. Nadine Okoro is going to want to see where the kids sleep, and when she asks me if there's a supervision plan, I'm going to tell her there is one, and it's going to be true."

"You are not taking my children."

"I'm not taking anybody. I'm going to be in this house with them, and you're going to be somewhere else, and when a judge tells me otherwise I'll do what the judge says."

She stood in my kitchen for a long moment.

Then she said the last thing she said to me that day, and it was not what I expected.

"He's going to be so angry at me."

She packed a bag and left at 5:40.

I did not ask her who.

I already knew, and asking would have told her I knew.

At 6:30 that evening I opened the Thursday in July.