Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Called Herself Mae
Grant did not sleep.
At 2:17 a.m., he sat alone in his private study with every photograph from Mara’s disappearance spread across the floor.
He had not looked at some of them in years.
Blackwater Bridge.
Her damaged sedan.
The dark stain on the driver’s seat.
A shoe discovered on the riverbank.
A blurred traffic-camera image of a vehicle passing the bridge at 11:46 p.m.
The police had classified Mara Mercer as a presumed drowning victim after eleven months.
Grant had refused to have her declared legally dead.
Everyone said it was grief.
Now he wondered whether grief had been the only sane response he had made.
Nora entered carrying coffee.
“You shouldn’t be awake.”
Grant looked up.
“Neither should you.”
“I heard you walking.”
“Sophie?”
“Asleep.”
He gestured toward the files.
“Sit.”
Nora sat opposite him.
Grant pushed a photograph across the desk.
Mara’s car.
“Tell me what she remembered.”
Nora looked at the image for a long time.
“She remembered rain.”
“It was raining.”
“She remembered being in the passenger seat.”
Grant frowned.
“Police believed she was driving.”
“She said she wasn’t.”
“Who was?”
“She never remembered his face.”
“Male?”
“Yes.”
“Did she know him?”
“She thought so.”
“What else?”
“An argument. She remembered saying that Grant would find out.”
Grant leaned forward.
“About what?”
“She didn’t know at first.”
“And later?”
Nora looked toward the windows.
“She remembered numbers.”
“What numbers?”
“Accounts. Donations. Transfers.”
Grant’s expression changed.
Mara had chaired the Mercer Hope Foundation.
A nonprofit funded largely through Grant’s holdings.
Five years earlier the foundation had controlled almost $180 million in assets.
“What kind of transfers?”
“She believed money was disappearing.”
Grant stood.
“That makes no sense. The foundation is audited.”
“By people your company hires?”
“Yes.”
“People Owen supervises?”
Grant stopped.
Owen served on the foundation’s board.
Grant walked to the window.
“Did Mara accuse him?”
“She never gave me a name until the end.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t trust her own memory.”
Grant understood that.
Mara hated making accusations without proof.
Even before her disappearance, she would spend days verifying facts other people would declare after five minutes.
Nora continued.
“The first year I knew her, she would wake up screaming from nightmares.”
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“She remembered water?”
“Sometimes.”
“She couldn’t swim.”
“I know.”
He turned.
“How?”
“She told me.”
Of course.
Nora had known Mara during years Grant had lost.
It created a strange jealousy inside him.
She knew how Mara took her coffee now.
Which nightmares she had.
How her voice changed.
What five years had done to her.
Grant had been excluded from his own wife’s life.
Nora noticed his expression.
“She talked about you constantly.”
“I’m not sure that helps.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.”
Grant returned to the desk.
“Tell me about Ruth.”
“My aunt?”
“The recovery house.”
Nora nodded.
“Harbor House. Old farmhouse on the Maine coast. Ruth inherited it from my grandparents.”
“How did Mara get there?”
“A volunteer from Saint Gabriel Medical Outreach brought her.”
“When?”
“About eleven months after she disappeared.”
“Where had she been for those eleven months?”
“We never knew.”
Grant’s eyes narrowed.
“No hospital records?”
“Not under Mara Mercer.”
“Fingerprints?”
“She had none in the system.”
“Dental?”
“No reason to check.”
“She was nationally missing.”
“I know.”
“Her face was on television.”
“Not four years later.”
Grant hated that she was right.
News moved on.
The world moved on.
He hadn’t.
“What did she look like?”
“Different.”
“How?”
“She had a scar near her hairline. She’d lost weight. Her hair was shorter.”
“Did she know Sophie’s name?”
“Eventually.”
Nora smiled faintly.
“The first time she remembered it, she was baking bread.”
Grant stared.
“She dropped the bowl and just said, ‘Sophie.’ Then she sat on the kitchen floor and cried for an hour.”
His chest tightened.
“What about me?”
“That came three weeks later.”
“How?”
Nora hesitated.
“You probably won’t like this.”
“I haven’t liked anything tonight.”
“She saw you on television.”
Grant blinked.
“You were announcing a merger.”
He remembered.
The Carroway acquisition.
One of the largest deals of his career.
He had stood before cameras in New York while hollow inside.
“What happened?”
“She screamed.”
Grant flinched.
“Not because she was afraid of you,” Nora said quickly. “Because she knew you.”
“What did she say?”
“‘That’s my husband.’”
Grant looked down.
Nora continued softly.
“Then she touched the screen and said, ‘Why does he look so old?’”
Grant laughed before he could stop himself.
It was one broken sound.
Mara would say something like that.
“She cried afterward,” Nora said.
“So why didn’t she call?”
“She did.”
Grant’s head snapped up.
“When?”
“The next morning.”
“I never got a call.”
“She dialed Mercer Tower. Asked for you personally.”
“And?”
“They transferred her.”
“To whom?”
“She didn’t know.”
Grant’s stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
“She said she was Mara Mercer.”
“And?”
“The person told her to wait.”
Nora paused.
“Then a man came to Harbor House that night.”
Grant became still.
“Who?”
“We never learned his name.”
“What did he do?”
“He asked Ruth whether we had taken in a confused brunette woman.”
“Description?”
“Tall. Gray coat. Expensive shoes.”
“Owen?”
“No. Older.”
“What happened?”
“Ruth lied.”
Grant almost smiled.
“She said there was no one there?”
“She said Harbor House had closed for winter.”
“And the man believed her?”
“No.”
Nora’s voice changed.
“He walked around the property.”
Grant leaned forward.
“Mara saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Recognized him?”
“She panicked.”
“Who was he?”
“She couldn’t remember.”
Grant tapped a finger against the desk.
“What happened next?”
“We moved Mara.”
“To where?”
“My apartment in Boston.”
Grant stared.
“You hid my wife in Boston?”
“For six months.”
Six months.
Grant owned properties in Boston.
He traveled there monthly.
He could have passed her in the street.
“How did nobody recognize her?”
“She barely went outside.”
“Why didn’t you contact police?”
“Mara refused.”
“You listened to an injured woman with memory loss?”
“I listened to a terrified woman whose location had been discovered less than twelve hours after she tried contacting you.”
Grant had no answer.
Nora reached into her pocket.
“There’s something else.”
She placed a folded photograph on the table.
It showed Nora and a woman standing beside the ocean.
The image had faded.
The woman wore sunglasses and a wool hat.
But Grant knew her.
He knew the angle of her jaw.
The slight bend of her left pinky.
Mara.
His fingers trembled as he touched the image.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“You have more?”
“No.”
“Why only this?”
“Mara hated photographs after what happened.”
Grant turned it over.
Writing covered the back.
If I forget again, remind me I have a daughter who laughs with her whole face and a husband who burns toast because he refuses to use a timer.
Grant closed his eyes.
He did burn toast.
Every morning.
Mara used to tease him.
No news article knew that.
No investigator.
No fraudster.
This was her.
His wife had been alive.
A sound came from the hallway.
Both looked toward the door.
Footsteps.
Grant gathered the photographs quickly.
The handle moved.
Locked.
“Who is it?” Grant asked.
“Me.”
His head of security.
Daniel Reeve.
Grant opened the door partially.
Daniel stood outside.
“Sorry to bother you, sir.”
“What happened?”
“There was an alert from the east perimeter.”
Grant glanced at Nora.
“What kind?”
“Someone crossed the garden near the service entrance.”
“Did you catch them?”
“No.”
Daniel hesitated.
“But we found this.”
He held up a small envelope.
Grant took it.
His name was written across the front.
No stamp.
No address.
Just:
GRANT
He opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Sophie leaving school two days earlier.
Taken from across the street.
On the back, four words:
Stop asking about Mara.
Grant’s blood went cold.
Then Nora whispered behind him.
“That’s the same handwriting.”
He turned.
“What?”
“The photograph Mara received eight months ago.”
Grant looked at the message again.
Someone knew.
Someone knew Nora had spoken.
Someone knew Grant had started asking questions.
May you like
And whoever had watched Mara for five years had now turned their attention toward Sophie.
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