Chapter 11 - The Medical File
I spent the next hour trying not to throw up.
My mother had collapsed at work. The hospital called it a brain aneurysm. There had been no autopsy because the doctors said there was no reason.
Detective Torres pulled the records.
One page was missing.
Not scanned wrong. Removed.
The emergency physician who signed the file had retired to Arizona six years ago. The nurse who admitted my mother was still in Brooklyn.
Her name was June Parker.
We met her at a diner the next morning.
June was seventy-two and suspicious the second Ricardo walked in.
“I’m not talking to him.”
“You can talk to me,” I said.
She studied my face. “You’re Evelyn’s girl.”
I nodded.
June’s eyes softened.
“Your mother came in terrified,” she said. “She told me somebody had followed her from work.”
“Did she say who?”
“No. But she gave me an envelope and told me to mail it if anything happened.”
My breath caught. “Did you?”
“I tried. Someone broke into my apartment that night. The envelope was gone.”
Ricardo leaned forward. “Who knew you had it?”
“Only one person.”
“Who?”
“The man who came to the ER claiming he was Evelyn’s employer.”
June opened her purse and removed an old Polaroid taken by a security camera monitor.
The image was faded, but the face was clear enough.
Marco.
May you like
June's hands shook when she touched the old Polaroid. She apologized for not coming to me years earlier. I told her she had been scared. She answered, 'So was your mother, and she still tried.' That sentence stayed lodged in my chest. Courage, I realized, wasn't the absence of fear. Sometimes it was being terrified and leaving a trail anyway, hoping the right person would eventually follow it.
Before we could speak, the diner window exploded inward.
