This Time I Choose Me

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

NORA

I never found out who Adrian Rayne was to him. I never got the chance to ask before the balcony took that chance away from me. But I remembered the address the way you remember the one piece of a puzzle you never got to place, turning it over uselessly for years, never finding where it fit.

Maybe this time I could find out.

The drive took just over two hours, mostly empty highway and gray sky, my hands steady on the wheel even though my mind wasn't steady at all. I ran through everything again and again, Sophia's flat little sorry, Daniel's voice saying I never mattered, Marcus outside that hotel door with his jacket and his kind eyes and his perfect timing. Pieces that hadn't fit before were starting to line up into something with a shape, even if I couldn't see the whole shape yet.

The care home sat back from the road behind a low stone wall, quiet and clean, the kind of place with manicured hedges and a gate that looked more decorative than serious, though I guessed the security ran deeper than what showed on the surface. I parked across the street and sat there for a long time, my hands on the wheel, working up whatever nerve I needed to walk through that gate and ask about a name I had no real right to know.

I thought about turning around more than once. I had no plan for what I'd say, no story ready if someone asked why I was there. I only had a name and a feeling that this mattered, that it connected somehow to everything else that had been quietly unraveling since I woke up back in that room with the leaf-shaped water stain on the ceiling.

Finally I got out of the car.

The gate buzzed open when I pressed the intercom and gave a simple excuse, said I was there to inquire about a family friend. A path led up to a small front building, warm lights inside despite the gray afternoon, the whole place built to feel gentle instead of clinical.

Inside, a woman sat behind a reception desk, older, kind-faced, a cardigan draped over her chair. She looked up when I walked in.

"Can I help you?"

I stood there for a second, my heart going harder than it should have for a simple question. "I'm looking for information about a resident. Her name would be listed under Rayne. I believe she might be related to a man named Adrian Rayne."

The woman's whole face changed.

It wasn't confusion. It wasn't the polite blankness of someone searching a system for a name that meant nothing to them. It was something closer to fear, quick and sharp, gone almost as fast as it came, but not fast enough that I missed it.

Her hand moved toward the phone on her desk, not lifting it, just resting there, like she needed something solid to hold onto.

"How do you know that name?" she asked, and her voice had dropped low, careful, like the walls themselves might be listening. "Nobody is supposed to know that she's family to him. Nobody outside a very short list of people."

I opened my mouth to answer, and found I didn't have one ready. I didn't even know who Adrian Rayne was yet, only a name overheard on the phone eight years in a future that hadn't happened. I had walked in here on instinct alone, and instinct had just confirmed there was something worth finding.

"I need to speak with her," I said instead. "It's important."

The woman didn't move for a long moment; she just stared at me like she was trying to decide something, like my face itself was a puzzle she was working to place.

"Wait here," she said finally, and picked up the phone.

The woman came back from behind the desk and didn't look at me the same way anymore. Whatever kindness had been on her face before was gone, replaced by something more careful, more measured, like she was talking to someone she wasn't sure she should be talking to at all.

"I called upstairs," she said. "Nobody there can speak to you. Not without proper clearance."

"I understand," I said, keeping my voice soft, the same voice I used to use with Daniel when I wanted something without asking for it directly. "I'm not here to cause any trouble. I only need to reach whoever handles her care. Her son, I believe. I have information that concerns him directly, and I think he'd want to hear it from me rather than through anyone else."

"I can't just hand out contact information for family members."

"I know," I said. "But I also know that whoever is paying for a place like this, a private room, this kind of privacy, wants to be protected from certain names getting out. And I already know one name that isn't supposed to be known. If that name got out the wrong way, to the wrong person, it wouldn't be my fault. I only came here to make sure it doesn't."

It wasn't quite a threat. I made sure of that, kept my tone gentle the whole time, but I watched it land the way I meant it to. Her hand tightened slightly on the edge of the desk.

"Wait here," she said again, and disappeared through a side door this time instead of picking up the phone.