Chapter Eleven: The Woman In The Photograph
335 Words
Julian didn't sleep that night. Mara knew because she didn't either, lying rigid on the far edge of his bed with three feet of cold sheet between them, both of them staring at the same patch of ceiling and pretending not to notice the other was awake.
At 4 AM, he finally spoke into the dark. "We have to go to the police."
"And say what? That my ex-girlfriend, who everyone assumes might be dead, has actually been texting her replacement for six weeks, threatening her, and just confessed to faking her own disappearance? They'll ask why we didn't come forward the first night you got a message."
"Because I didn't believe you," Mara said, quiet. "I thought it was some jealous ex of yours. Some troll. I didn't think—" She stopped. Started again. "I didn't think it was her."
Julian sat up, running both hands over his face. In the gray pre-dawn light he looked older than she'd ever seen him, the polish stripped away to something raw and frightened. "If she's alive, if she's really been out there this whole time, watching — then everyone who's spent five weeks grieving her, blaming me, tearing this company apart looking for answers — they deserve to know the truth. And so do I."
"She said one more push. She said I'd see what she saw." Mara sat up too, pulling the sheet around her like armor. "She wants something from me first, Julian. And until I know what that is, going to the police might not protect us. It might just make her disappear again — permanently, this time. And take whatever leverage she has with her."
He looked at her for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. "You're already thinking like she wants you to. Like there's a game, and you have to play it out to win."
"Isn't there?"
He didn't answer. That, more than anything he could have said, told her he thought she might be right.
- Writer
