Rachel eventually drifted into another uneasy sleep.<\/p>\n
Before I left the room, I told her I needed to make a phone call in the hallway.<\/p>\n
I explained that it was Nolan and that I would return as soon as I finished.<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"Don't let him talk you into anything."<\/p>\n
I stopped beside the bed.<\/p>\n
"What do you mean?"<\/p>\n
She looked exhausted.<\/p>\n
"I just mean don't agree to anything because he sounds upset."<\/p>\n
"I won't."<\/p>\n
She seemed satisfied with that answer.<\/p>\n
I waited until she closed her eyes before stepping into the hall.<\/p>\n
Then I called Nolan.<\/p>\n
He answered before the first ring had finished.<\/p>\n
"Where have you been?"<\/p>\n
His voice was sharp with worry.<\/p>\n
"I've been at the hospital with Rachel."<\/p>\n
There was a pause.<\/p>\n
"She's alive?"<\/p>\n
"Yes. She's receiving care."<\/p>\n
I heard him exhale.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then he said, "Thank God."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
He began talking quickly, telling me he had been trying to reach me for hours and had not known what to do when I failed to answer.<\/p>\n
I let him finish.<\/p>\n
When he stopped, I asked, "How did you know I was looking for Rachel?"<\/p>\n
Another pause.<\/p>\n
"I didn't know for sure."<\/p>\n
"Then why did you ask whether I'd found her?"<\/p>\n
He hesitated.<\/p>\n
I could hear traffic in the background.<\/p>\n
"I was trying to find out if you'd heard from her."<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
"Because she wasn't answering me."<\/p>\n
That answer was possible.<\/p>\n
It was also incomplete.<\/p>\n
I kept my voice level.<\/p>\n
"When did you last speak to her?"<\/p>\n
"Earlier today."<\/p>\n
"What did she tell you?"<\/p>\n
"Nothing unusual."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
He added, "We had a disagreement."<\/p>\n
"What was it about?"<\/p>\n
"Mom, I don't want to get into all that on the phone."<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
I had heard that sentence in a hundred different forms during my career.<\/p>\n
People wanted to provide an explanation without committing to details.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they were protecting private information.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they were frightened.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they were trying to keep control of a conversation.<\/p>\n
I could not determine which was true simply because I recognized the pattern.<\/p>\n
"I'm not asking you to explain everything," I said. "I'm asking what the disagreement was about."<\/p>\n
He sighed.<\/p>\n
"It was personal."<\/p>\n
"Was it about Rachel being at the garage?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
The answer came quickly.<\/p>\n
I held on to it without deciding what it meant.<\/p>\n
"Did you know she was there?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Did you know where she was?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Did you know she was in danger?"<\/p>\n
He did not answer immediately.<\/p>\n
That silence unsettled me.<\/p>\n
"Nolan?"<\/p>\n
"I knew she was upset."<\/p>\n
"That wasn't my question."<\/p>\n
"I didn't know she was in danger."<\/p>\n
His voice had become quieter.<\/p>\n
I stood beside the window at the end of the hallway.<\/p>\n
A car passed outside, its headlights sliding across the wet pavement.<\/p>\n
I needed to keep the conversation focused on what I actually knew.<\/p>\n
"Why were you calling me so many times?"<\/p>\n
"I was worried."<\/p>\n
"About what?"<\/p>\n
"About her. About what she might do."<\/p>\n
I felt my grip tighten around the phone.<\/p>\n
"What do you mean by that?"<\/p>\n
He exhaled again.<\/p>\n
"She told me she couldn't keep doing this."<\/p>\n
"What couldn't she keep doing?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know how to explain it."<\/p>\n
I looked down at the floor.<\/p>\n
The phrase sounded familiar because it was close to what Rachel had said to me.<\/p>\n
She had told me she had been trying to manage everyone's reactions.<\/p>\n
She had said she was frightened of things getting worse.<\/p>\n
Nolan was describing a conversation that seemed to have left him worried, too.<\/p>\n
That did not make their experiences equal.<\/p>\n
It did not establish what had happened at the garage.<\/p>\n
But it gave me another fact to consider.<\/p>\n
"What happened after she said that?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"We argued. She left."<\/p>\n
"Where did she go?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know."<\/p>\n
"Did you try to find her?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"How?"<\/p>\n
He went quiet.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"Did you call her?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"Did you go to her home?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Did you go to the garage?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
I made a note of his answers on the back of a receipt I found in my bag.<\/p>\n
I wrote down the time of the call and the words I could remember.<\/p>\n
I did not write down a conclusion.<\/p>\n
When I finished, I asked him whether he knew that the police had been called.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Do you know that they found Rachel in a locked garage?"<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
Then he said, "What?"<\/p>\n
I repeated the information carefully.<\/p>\n
I did not tell him where the garage was.<\/p>\n
I did not describe what the officers had done.<\/p>\n
I gave him only what he needed to understand why I was calling.<\/p>\n
He began asking questions.<\/p>\n
Was Rachel injured?<\/p>\n
Was she conscious?<\/p>\n
Had she told the police what happened?<\/p>\n
I answered the first two questions as accurately as I could.<\/p>\n
I told him I did not know what she had said to the officers.<\/p>\n
Then he asked, "Does she think I did this?"<\/p>\n
I looked at the closed door to Rachel's room.<\/p>\n
"I haven't asked her to make an accusation."<\/p>\n
"That's not what I asked."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
He sounded distressed.<\/p>\n
"Mom, you have to believe me. I didn't lock her in there."<\/p>\n
I said nothing for a moment.<\/p>\n
I had not accused him of doing that.<\/p>\n
He had introduced the idea himself.<\/p>\n
"I haven't decided who did anything," I said. "The police are handling the situation. If they ask you questions, you need to answer them honestly."<\/p>\n
"I'm telling you the truth."<\/p>\n
"I hear you."<\/p>\n
"You don't sound like you believe me."<\/p>\n
"I sound like someone who doesn't have enough information to make a decision."<\/p>\n
He let out a frustrated breath.<\/p>\n
"That's how you talk in court."<\/p>\n
I felt the words land between us.<\/p>\n
"You're right," I said. "I do talk that way in court."<\/p>\n
"You're doing it to me now."<\/p>\n
I leaned against the wall.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he was right about that part.<\/p>\n
I was using the language I trusted because it gave me something solid to hold.<\/p>\n
But this was not a courtroom.<\/p>\n
Nolan was frightened, Rachel was in a hospital bed, and I was trying to understand two people whose accounts I had not yet heard in full.<\/p>\n
I could not abandon the need for facts.<\/p>\n
I also could not pretend that speaking like a prosecutor was the same as speaking like a mother.<\/p>\n
"I am asking you direct questions because I need to understand what you know," I said. "But I'm not deciding that you're guilty of anything."<\/p>\n
He went quiet.<\/p>\n
Then he asked whether he could come to the hospital.<\/p>\n
I looked toward Rachel's room.<\/p>\n
"I need to ask her whether she wants visitors."<\/p>\n
"She's my family, too."<\/p>\n
"I understand."<\/p>\n
"So you're going to let her decide whether I can see her?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
He sounded hurt.<\/p>\n
I could not change my answer to make the conversation easier.<\/p>\n
Rachel had already told me she did not want to be pushed into anything.<\/p>\n
I had promised to respect that.<\/p>\n
"I'll tell her you asked," I said. "I won't pressure her to agree."<\/p>\n
Nolan did not respond for several seconds.<\/p>\n
Then he said, "I just want to know she's okay."<\/p>\n
"She's being cared for."<\/p>\n
"Can you tell her I called?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
He thanked me.<\/p>\n
Before ending the call, I asked one final question.<\/p>\n
"Is there anything else about today's argument that you think I need to know?"<\/p>\n
He hesitated.<\/p>\n
"She said she was tired of everyone deciding what she meant."<\/p>\n
I held the phone tightly.<\/p>\n
"What did you say?"<\/p>\n
"I told her I was trying to help."<\/p>\n
"And then?"<\/p>\n
"She left."<\/p>\n
The call ended a short time later.<\/p>\n
I remained in the hallway, looking at the notes I had made.<\/p>\n
The disagreement had happened earlier that day.<\/p>\n
Rachel had said she could not keep doing something.<\/p>\n
Nolan had interpreted that as a reason to worry about her.<\/p>\n
He had called me repeatedly.<\/p>\n
He denied going to the garage.<\/p>\n
Those were the facts I had gathered from the conversation.<\/p>\n
They did not tell me who had locked the door.<\/p>\n
They did not explain how Rachel had ended up inside.<\/p>\n
They did not prove that Nolan had been involved.<\/p>\n
But the argument mattered because it was part of the hours before I found her.<\/p>\n
I folded the receipt and placed it in my bag.<\/p>\n
Then I went back to Rachel's room.<\/p>\n
She was awake.<\/p>\n
I told her I had spoken to Nolan.<\/p>\n
I gave her a brief, honest account of the conversation without telling her what she should think about it.<\/p>\n
She listened quietly.<\/p>\n
When I finished, she asked, "Did he say he wanted to come here?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
Her face tightened.<\/p>\n
"Do you want him to come?" I asked.<\/p>\n
She shook her head immediately.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
She looked surprised.<\/p>\n
"That's it?"<\/p>\n
"That's it for now."<\/p>\n
"What if he gets angry?"<\/p>\n
"Then we'll deal with that if it happens. You don't have to agree to a visit because you're worried about his reaction."<\/p>\n
She closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
I sat beside her.<\/p>\n
I could feel the weight of the unanswered questions, but I did not place them on her shoulders.<\/p>\n
The conversation with Nolan had given me more information.<\/p>\n
It had not given me a final answer.<\/p>\n
I was learning to live with that difference.<\/p>\n
Rachel eventually drifted into another uneasy sleep. Before I left the room, I told her I needed to make a phone call in the hallway. I explained that it was … <\/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-39339","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\/39339","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=39339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39359,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39339\/revisions\/39359"}],"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=39339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}