Chapter 6
Martin arrived before we left.
Good.
I wanted him to see the basement.
He entered wearing a dinner jacket and irritation.
Then noticed the photographs.
I watched twenty years fall from his face.
“Everett.”
“Where is Elise?”
“I don’t know.”
Too immediate.
I held up the Harbor House receipt.
His mouth tightened.
“She went there.”
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
“Why?”
“To calm down.”
I stared.
“You transported my adult daughter against her will to a closed family property so she could calm down.”
“She agreed eventually.”
“After being locked here.”
Silence.
Again.
Consent manufactured by removing options.
Martin still did not see it.
“Elise was going to destroy marriages.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“She was helping women decide whether they wanted those marriages.”
“Same result.”
There.
That was his world.
Choice itself was destabilizing.
“What happened at Harbor House?”
Martin looked toward Brent.
Brent looked at Celia.
Nobody wanted ownership.
Finally Martin said:
“Elise escaped.”
My breathing stopped.
“Escaped?”
“She had her phone returned after she promised not to involve you.”
Of course.
Promise extracted.
Then?
She contacted someone.
A man Martin did not know.
Within hours, a car arrived.
Elise walked out.
No one stopped her because Martin believed she would cool down.
Instead she disappeared.
“So she did run away.”
Martin looked relieved.
I almost hit him.
Did not.
“She escaped from you.”
Different sentence.
Different reality.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Audrey spoke from the stairs.
“I might.”
We all turned.
She had been going through Elise’s old messages.
One name repeated months before disappearance.
Clara Wynn.
I knew no Clara.
Audrey did.
A college friend of Elise.
Lives in Maine.
Runs a small inn.
Elise once told Audrey:
“If I ever need somewhere nobody thinks Sloan, Clara is where I’d go.”
Four months.
My daughter might have been alive this entire time.
May you like
Not hiding because she hated us.
Hiding because family associates had already proven my name could be used to find her.
