Arthur exhaled once.
“Then there may be more.”
I did not ask what he meant.
I already knew.
Marcus’s voicemail was not the beginning.
It was the first thing they had failed to bury.
I put Maya’s phone in a clean paper lunch bag from the pantry.
I wrote 5:11 a.m. on the outside.
Then I helped her stand.
She nearly collapsed against me.
“Mom,” she whispered, “what if they really say I fell?”
I tucked the quilt tighter around her shoulders.
“Then we will be louder than their lie,” I said.
I drove her to the county hospital with the heater blasting and one hand ready to catch her if she slumped sideways.
The sky was still black.
The road was empty except for mailbox reflectors, frost-white ditches, and a delivery truck idling near the gas station.
Maya held her stomach the whole way.
Every few minutes, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
