Visiting Hours

Chapter 4

When Josh's door opens, he walks out holding his phone, and for one second his face does something I've never seen it do. It goes completely blank. Not sad, not shocked, just empty, like a house with every light turned off and nobody home, and maybe nobody ever was. Then it's gone, and he's Josh again, warm and concerned, running a hand through his hair as he asks whether I heard. I tell him I just saw.

"Did you know her?"

"No."

"Good."

The word lands between us like something dropped on a tile floor, and I watch him hear it. "I mean," he says, softer, "good that this won't be personal for you. It's going to be a hard few days around here." He looks out over the office, where every head drops the moment his eyes reach it, and asks me to clear his afternoon and draft a short, respectful statement from the company for legal to review. When I say of course, he rests his hand on my shoulder for just a second, the same hand with the same watch, and tells me he doesn't know what he'd do without me. Then he goes back into his office, and I sit very still until my shoulder stops feeling burned.

So I write it. Calloway Energy is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Lauren Pike, a former member of our executive team. Lauren was a valued colleague whose dedication and warmth will be remembered by all who worked with her. I write it three times, because my hands won't stop shaking and because every time I reach her name, my fingers type Tessa instead.

Tessa Romero was the last girl I knew who fell. Nine years ago, nobody called it that. They called it a homicide, a fight that got out of hand. They called my husband a killer in headlines and in court and in the comments section of the Alvin Sun, where people I went to church with wrote that he deserved the needle. But the first thing I heard that night, before the sirens and the screaming, before anyone knew anything, was a voice in the dark by the old barn on the Henley property, a man's voice, high and panicked. She fell. She just fell. Oh God, she just fell. I told the detective that three times, and he wrote down intoxicated.

At 3:30, my desk phone rings, and the caller ID says HPD. The man on the line introduces himself as Detective Ray Okafor with the Houston Police Department, in a calm, unhurried voice with a little Louisiana around the edges, and says he's trying to confirm Lauren Pike's dates of employment. I offer to transfer him to HR. He says he'd appreciate that, and then, before I can, he asks how long I've worked here and whether I replaced Ms. Pike. I tell him eight months, and that I never met her, and I hear him writing.

"Do you know if she had any close relationships at the company?" he asks. "Anyone she was particularly friendly with?"

I look at Josh's closed door and think about a cropped photo, a steel watch, and a hand on the small of a woman's back. Then I think about the last time I told a detective the truth, and what it cost me.

"I really wouldn't know," I say. "I'll transfer you to HR."

He thanks me, and then, after a pause that goes on a little too long, he asks what I said my name was. I put him on hold before I have to answer. Josh leaves at four without saying goodbye, which he never does.

By seven, the floor is empty except for the cleaning crew humming somewhere down the hall, a radio playing Tejano music low and tinny. Outside, the city has gone from dark blue to black, freckled with a million lights. I should go home, eat something, fold the laundry, wash the mugs, and call my mother back. Instead, I sit in Lauren's chair and look at Lauren's desk, and for the first time in eight months, I really see it: the scratch on the left corner where something heavy was dragged, the faint ring where her mug used to sit, the pothos still hanging on in its blue pot. What did you know, I wonder, sitting right here? What did you see that got you walked out of this building, and what did it get you after that?

My feet hurt, so I reach into the bottom drawer for my backup flats, and the drawer sticks the way it always does, catching on something halfway out. For eight months, I've assumed it was broken. I've jiggled it, cursed at it, shoved it shut with my knee, and put in a ticket with facilities that nobody ever answered. Tonight I pull harder, and the drawer comes all the way off its track, nearly dropping into my lap as Advil and Tums and sewing kits scatter across the carpet. I don't care. I turn the drawer over.

Taped flat against the underside is a small brass key with a round plastic tag, the kind you'd find on a locker or a mailbox, stamped in black: C-14. Across the tape that holds it, in blue ballpoint and loopy, confident handwriting, someone has written one word.

Ellie.

Down the hall, the Tejano music stops. The air conditioning kicks on, and for just a second, I smell vanilla. Nobody in Houston has called me Ellie in nine years. Not my coworkers, not my landlord, not the barista who spells my name wrong every morning. I made sure of it, and Ellie Marsh stayed in Alvin with everything else I couldn't carry. Lauren Pike never met me, but she knew exactly who I was, and she knew I'd be sitting in this chair.