Chapter 2

"Give me the card," Detective Chen said.

I handed it over before Elias could open the passenger door. Rain had begun, settling in the dark seam of the detective's coat. She photographed the writing, slipped the card into an evidence envelope, and looked at me over the roof of her car.

"Did either of them threaten you?"

"Not in words."

"Then tell me exactly what they did."

Ruth Chen was a compact woman with cropped hair and a pale mark where a wedding ring might once have been. She listened without finishing my sentences. I had trusted her first because she had never called me lucky.

I told her about Adrian's hand, Lila's ring, and Rusk at the terrace doors. When I mentioned the ring being recovered from my body, Elias looked away.

Chen noticed.

"We're obtaining the retained pathology samples," she told him.

He nodded once.

Only after we reached my lawyer's office did I ask what that meant.

Elias stood beside a window overlooking the harbor. His shirt cuff was frayed where the borrowed jacket ended. He had driven me to rehabilitation appointments, carried my groceries, and learned to stop talking when a siren made me lose the thread of a conversation. I knew he had been at the Halcyon to collect someone after work.

I had not asked who. Being alive had made me selfish in ways I was only beginning to see.

"My sister," he said.

"Who was she?"

"Miriam Holt."

I put my hand on the table.

Miriam had run the Halcyon's housekeeping department for nineteen years. She wore yellow cardigans beneath her uniform coat and carried peppermint sweets for staff who skipped lunch. On the night of the fire, she had pushed an envelope into my hands outside the west archive.

I had dropped it when Rusk told us to move.

"They said she went back inside for her bag," Elias continued.

"They never found her?"

He shook his head.

My stomach turned. One badly burned body had been identified as mine. Miriam was still missing. Adrian had displayed my ring at the funeral, although I had not been wearing it in the fire.

"You think the ashes are hers."

"I think we have to find out."

He said it without accusation, which made it worse.

My lawyer, Tessa Ward, came in carrying a folder. She had represented my father's estate before she represented me, and her severe black suit looked as familiar as the smell of cedar in his office.

"Your identity is no longer a question," she said.

The hospital records, fingerprints, and DNA comparison were complete. Correcting the civil records would take paperwork, but Adrian could not continue presenting himself as my widower while selling assets from my estate. Tessa had notified the relevant parties that morning and secured undertakings against further transfers pending the court's directions.

I still owned forty percent of the Halcyon. I had money in accounts Adrian had never controlled. I would not need to beg him for somewhere to sleep.

"He'll say I'm confused."

"Then he can say it to your doctors."

For the first time that day, I nearly smiled.

Chen asked me to repeat what I remembered after leaving the archive. I described the service hatch, the narrow balcony beneath it, and Elias catching my coat as I slid toward the loading yard. I remembered little of the ambulance. Severe smoke injury had kept me sedated for five weeks.

I had been transferred to a specialist unit outside the city without my bag or identification. Both hands were bandaged, my face swollen around a breathing tube. Elias had never met me before the rescue. While the hospital tried to identify an unconscious patient, the people searching for Nora Bell had been told my body was already found.

When I could finally give my name, the hospital contacted the police at my request. I told them the door had been locked deliberately. Chen arranged confidentiality while she verified my account and I learned to walk without an oxygen cylinder.

Adrian's wedding announcement had appeared three days before my identity testing was complete.

"I know I should have waited," I said.

"You were entitled to stop a man from replacing you," Chen replied.

"You were not helping yourself by doing it without a safety plan."

She asked me not to meet Lila alone. I agreed. Whatever I had imagined revenge would feel like, it had not included the possibility of Miriam's ashes sitting in my house under my name.

After the others left, Elias poured water into a paper cup and set it near my good hand.

"You knew about Miriam all this time," I said.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"At first you couldn't stay awake long enough to hear it."

"After that, I didn't know how to ask you to remember the worst night of your life for me."

I looked at his crooked finger.

"You could have asked."

"I'm asking now."

I covered his hand with mine. He went still, then turned his palm upward beneath my fingers. It was the first time I had touched him without needing help to stand.

My phone rang before either of us moved.

Lila's name appeared on the screen. I put it on speaker and waited.

"I can't explain this in writing," she said.

Behind her voice, I heard a door shut.

"Adrian thinks you're afraid of him."

"He's wrong, isn't he?"

"Tell me who locked the door."

She drew a breath.

"First you need to know what he was waiting for you to sign."