I finally took my phone out again.<\/p>\n
The screen lit up against the gray afternoon.<\/p>\n
Nolan's name was still there.<\/p>\n
I opened the recent calls and looked at the three entries.<\/p>\n
I did not press his number.<\/p>\n
I did not know what I would say.<\/p>\n
If he answered, I would have to explain why I had ignored him.<\/p>\n
If he asked where I was, I would have to decide how much to tell him.<\/p>\n
If he knew something about Rachel, I needed to hear it.<\/p>\n
But if he knew nothing, I did not want to waste time arguing with him while the officers were still working.<\/p>\n
I put the phone away.<\/p>\n
I had spent much of my life asking people to distinguish what they knew from what they believed.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I had to keep asking myself the same question.<\/p>\n
What did I know?<\/p>\n
I knew I had heard coughing behind the garage door.<\/p>\n
I knew I had called Rachel's name.<\/p>\n
I knew three knocks had followed.<\/p>\n
I knew I had called 911 and followed the dispatcher's instructions.<\/p>\n
I knew Nolan had tried to contact me three times.<\/p>\n
That was the extent of it.<\/p>\n
The rest was uncertainty.<\/p>\n
I repeated those facts to myself as though I were preparing to question a witness.<\/p>\n
It helped for a few seconds.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the door again.<\/p>\n
I could not stop imagining Rachel inside.<\/p>\n
I thought about how difficult it must be to wait when you cannot tell whether anyone is coming to help.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had heard my voice.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had recognized it.<\/p>\n
I hoped she had.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to know I was still there.<\/p>\n
The officer moved away from the lock briefly to adjust his position.<\/p>\n
I watched him, trying to understand how much longer the process might take.<\/p>\n
I knew better than to ask.<\/p>\n
There was no useful answer he could give me.<\/p>\n
He was dealing with the situation in front of him, not the one I had constructed in my head.<\/p>\n
I took another step back when he indicated that I should give him more room.<\/p>\n
The movement felt almost insulting in its simplicity.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be beside the door.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be the first person Rachel saw.<\/p>\n
But I had called professionals because I needed them to handle something I could not safely manage alone.<\/p>\n
I could not demand their help and then insist on doing things my way.<\/p>\n
I stayed back.<\/p>\n
The rain had become little more than a fine mist.<\/p>\n
The concrete remained slick.<\/p>\n
A thin stream of water followed the edge of the pavement toward the drain.<\/p>\n
I watched it for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the garage again.<\/p>\n
I remembered being young enough to believe that adults always knew what to do.<\/p>\n
My parents had seemed certain even when they were wrong.<\/p>\n
My teachers had seemed certain.<\/p>\n
The judges I appeared before had seemed certain.<\/p>\n
As I grew older, I learned that confidence and knowledge were not the same thing.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the person who looked most certain was simply the person most willing to hide their doubts.<\/p>\n
I had tried to avoid that mistake in my own work.<\/p>\n
I had never been afraid to tell a jury that the evidence did not establish something.<\/p>\n
I had never believed uncertainty was a weakness.<\/p>\n
Yet standing outside that garage, I wanted certainty more than I had ever wanted anything.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know Rachel was inside.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know she was alive.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what had happened before I arrived.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why the door was locked.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether Nolan's calls mattered.<\/p>\n
The questions kept coming.<\/p>\n
The answers did not.<\/p>\n
I forced myself to stop listing them.<\/p>\n
There was nothing to gain by asking the same questions in a different order.<\/p>\n
The officers were still working.<\/p>\n
That was the only thing that mattered in that moment.<\/p>\n
I looked at the padlock.<\/p>\n
Its surface reflected a little light from the cloudy sky.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether the officers would be able to remove it without damaging the door.<\/p>\n
Then I felt ashamed.<\/p>\n
I was worrying about the door.<\/p>\n
Rachel might be inside, and I was worrying about the door.<\/p>\n
But that was not really what I was doing.<\/p>\n
I was searching for something small and practical to care about because the larger possibility was too frightening.<\/p>\n
I had done that before.<\/p>\n
I had organized files while waiting for difficult news.<\/p>\n
I had cleaned a desk before a trial I was afraid of losing.<\/p>\n
I had checked details that did not matter because I could not control the things that did.<\/p>\n
The habit had made me appear composed.<\/p>\n
It had not made me less afraid.<\/p>\n
One officer turned toward me and asked whether I could remain where I was.<\/p>\n
I said yes.<\/p>\n
He thanked me and returned to the door.<\/p>\n
The exchange lasted only a few seconds.<\/p>\n
Still, I was grateful for the ordinary tone of his voice.<\/p>\n
He was not treating me as a nuisance.<\/p>\n
He was not promising something he could not guarantee.<\/p>\n
He was simply doing his job.<\/p>\n
I had spent years wishing people would behave that way when the stakes were high.<\/p>\n
Now I depended on it.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the alley entrance.<\/p>\n
No one approached.<\/p>\n
I looked back at the garage.<\/p>\n
The officers remained focused on the lock.<\/p>\n
I thought about calling Nolan one last time.<\/p>\n
The urge was strong enough that I took the phone from my pocket again.<\/p>\n
I opened his contact.<\/p>\n
My thumb hovered over the call button.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped.<\/p>\n
I did not know whether he had information that could help.<\/p>\n
I did not know whether speaking to him would clarify anything.<\/p>\n
I knew the officers were still handling the immediate emergency.<\/p>\n
I put the phone away.<\/p>\n
I would not make another decision simply because I could not stand the one I had already made.<\/p>\n
I looked at the garage and waited.<\/p>\n
I finally took my phone out again. The screen lit up against the gray afternoon. Nolan's name was still there. I opened the recent calls and looked at the three … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39347,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39327\/revisions\/39347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}