In the dining room, he looked at the pictures again. The most recent one was a five-by-seven shot of the two daughters. Emily’s smile seemed put on, but the one on the face of her younger sister seemed genuine.
Quinn grabbed the picture and started to turn toward the exit. But he didn’t even make it a step before he stopped himself and looked back at the box still sitting on the floor of the living room.
He thought about it for less than a second, then walked over and grabbed it, adding the photo he’d just taken to the top. The photo of Emily and her sister—the same woman, not a man, who had been behind the wheel of the car Nate was now following.
CHAPTER
14
HER PARENTS WERE DEAD.
Her sister was dead.
And the only person who could be blamed for it was Marion herself. That’s what she believed. How could there be any other answer?
She had taken Iris on the train north from Penn Station back to Marion’s hometown of Montreal. She had used the false passports her friend in Cote d’Ivoire had given her when she purchased the tickets. She hoped it was enough to fool whoever was looking for her.
While the child was asleep, Marion would stare out the window, not sure what she was going to do, but knowing if anyone could help her, it would be her parents.
Sure, her sister was living back at home, and bringing a child into the house wasn’t going to do a lot to help Emily’s recovery. The divorce Emily had gone through had been wrenching. Marion couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like when her sister found out her husband, who never wanted to have children, was having an affair with someone who was now pregnant. Of course, that had been over a year ago. The baby was born by now.
Marion knew her sister well. She knew Emily might not say anything, but she would feel humiliated, and think of herself as a freshly minted spinster too old to have children. It wasn’t true, but that’s the way Emily’s mind worked. Poetic and tragic.
But Marion couldn’t worry about her sister’s feelings anymore. She’d been living with Emily’s drama since the day she was born. It was time to stop getting pulled into it. The reason was stretched out in the seat next to her, not asleep at that moment, but content. Iris.
They arrived in her hometown that evening, then grabbed a taxi at the station. The cabbie took a second look at her and Iris, but said nothing.
Iris seemed very interested in the world outside the taxi as they drove through the streets. The smile on the child’s face, the smile that was almost always there, seemed a fraction broader. Marion took this as a good sign.
As they turned onto the street where her parents lived, the anxiousness Marion had been feeling for so long began to subside. Soon she would be in the home she grew up in, eating her mother’s food, sleeping in the room that had been hers, safe in the cocoon of family. But as they neared the house, she realized something wasn’t right.
On the lawn in front of her house were dozens of flickering candles and bundles of flowers, and people, their heads bowed. The house itself, though, was dark.
“No, no. Keep driving,” she told him in French. “I must have the wrong street.”
The driver seemed relieved when she gave him the name of the next street over.
“Horrible,” he said as he glanced over at her childhood home. “Just horrible.”
She almost asked him what had happened. His words indicated he knew, but her own voice had left her. Someone had died in the house. There was no question about it.
On the next street over she got out, paid the cabbie, then watched him drive away.
Ten minutes later, at a pay phone several blocks away, she called for another taxi.
“Where to?” the driver asked once she and Iris were in the back seat.
She had thought about this while she’d waited for him to arrive. She was afraid to use her false ID, thinking it might create a trail someone could pick up on. And there was no way she could use her real ID. She needed to find someplace anonymous.
“Saint Laurent,” she said, naming the borough on the west side of Montreal. “Boulevard Marcel-Laurin.”
The cabbie eyed her in his rearview mirror. “Do you have a specific location?”
She hadn’t recalled the name of the motel, but knew basically where it was located. A sleazy place that she’d heard charged room rates by the hour. It worried her to take Iris there, but she at least knew they wouldn’t ask for an ID.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to know now.”
She took a quick breath. She was on the edge of breaking down, but she forced herself to keep it together. “It’s a motel, okay? I don’t remember the name.”
The driver hesitated. “Motel Monique?”
“Yes,” she said, realizing he was right. “That’s it.”
“Deposit,” he said.
