Chapter 2 - The Guardian Who Never Visited
Dana had expected to spend that afternoon testing the sound system. Instead she sat between Lila and a hotel employee while two city officers studied a guardianship order faxed to the front desk.
The document named Eleanor Bellini, Marco's older sister, as guardian. It bore a judicial seal, a case number, and a date five years after Lila's disappearance. Dana asked how somebody who had vanished could have appeared in a guardianship proceeding. The officer said he didn't know and wasn't going to resolve a civil court order in a hotel office.
That answer frightened Dana more than a refusal would have. A stamp on paper was taking up space where her sister's living voice should have been.
"I don't want to go back," Lila told the officers. She said it quietly, but not ambiguously.
One officer asked whether she had been restrained. Lila looked at Dana. "Sometimes. Mostly they told me there was nowhere else to go. They took my identification. They said my mother had signed papers."
"Our mother never signed papers," Dana said.
"Ms. Hale," the other officer replied, "let's allow your sister to answer."
Dana bit back the retort she wanted to give. Lila deserved an interview that was hers, not an extension of Dana's panic. She sat back and watched her sister slowly describe locked exterior doors, controlled telephone access, and staff who had changed frequently enough that she stopped learning their names.
An emergency department clinician arrived after the officers requested a medical evaluation. She asked Lila whether she wanted to go to the hospital. Lila first said no. When the clinician promised she could speak privately and decline an examination, Lila agreed. The hotel manager arranged a vehicle and gave security a written account of the slap. The bride's mother, furious about the delayed ceremony, came downstairs and threatened to sue the planning company. Dana gave the woman her event binder and said she was leaving.
The loss was immediate: months of work, the largest contract of Dana's year, and a set of vendor relationships that depended on avoiding public scandal. She should have assigned a deputy earlier. She had begun digging into Marco only after a vendor asked why the surname on a venue insurance certificate differed from his wedding application. Finding Lila's name on the public marriage record had detonated everything she had been trying to keep professional.
At the hospital, Lila refused to be examined by a male physician. The staff honored the request. Dana sat in the waiting area with a paper cup of cold coffee and called their mother, Marianne. She had prepared for this conversation in dreams a thousand times. In reality, all she could say was, "She's alive. Mom, Lila is alive."
Marianne arrived breathless in a cardigan buttoned wrong. Through the glass Dana saw her press both palms to her mouth when Lila stepped out of the examination room. Lila approached cautiously and allowed herself to be held. Marianne began apologizing for things she hadn't done. Lila asked her to stop.
"I know you looked," she said. "They showed me pictures of you looking. Then they said you'd stopped."
"We never stopped," Dana told her.
"I know that now."
The detective assigned to the original missing-person file arrived that evening. His name was Frank Bell. He had aged enough that Dana recognized his voice before his face. He asked for a timeline rather than conclusions. The sisters gave it as well as they could. Lila could not reliably distinguish the first months of confinement; she remembered medication, unfamiliar rooms, and Marco saying that the marriage would make her safe from people who wanted her money.
"What money?" Dana asked.
Lila shook her head. "I kept asking him that."
Bell requested copies of the marriage and guardianship records. He explained that an old missing-person investigation, possible unlawful imprisonment, and disputed civil orders would involve different investigators and courts. He promised neither an arrest nor a quick resolution. Dana found herself grateful for the absence of a dramatic declaration. She no longer believed in any adult who said everything would be fixed tonight.
Before leaving, Bell asked how Lila had reached the hotel.
"A woman drove me," Lila answered.
"Did she give you her name?"
"No. She said if I told anyone, Marco would know she helped me."
"What kind of car?"
"White. Old. The dashboard was cracked."
May you like
Lila dug into the sleeve of her cardigan and drew out a torn corner of a yellow receipt. On the back, in cramped handwriting, someone had written an address and three words: BEFORE HE BURNS IT.
The address belonged to the courthouse where the guardianship order was supposedly entered. The date beneath the message was tomorrow.
