Eventually Gloria opened her front door herself.
When she saw her sister, she covered her face with both hands.
They stood together on the porch for a long time.
Derek drove away without entering the house.
That was the first afternoon in months that Gloria did not appear to be waiting for somebody else’s permission to breathe.
Mina arranged a meeting at the library two days later.
Gloria came with Marian and a county advocate named Rachel Soto.
I came with Mina and the bruise on my cheek, which had faded into a yellow crescent.
We sat in a room where I had once taught teenagers to record podcasts.
Gloria looked at the microphone stands stacked against the wall and began crying before anyone spoke.
“I am sorry for hitting you,” she said.
“I was scared, and I thought she was being hurt.”
“I believe you were frightened,” I replied.
“I also need you to understand that you hurt me and made other people believe something terrible about me.”
She nodded.
Marian reached for her hand but let Gloria decide whether to take it.
Rachel explained that a private welfare confirmation was available through the appropriate agency, but the agency would not provide Molly’s address or personal circumstances without her consent.
“I can ask whether she wants to communicate,” Rachel said.
“I cannot promise she will.”
Gloria swallowed.
“Please ask her.”
Mina placed a printed photograph of the waveform on the table.
“We need your permission to review how these messages arrived,” she said.
“There may be other people receiving similarly fabricated recordings.”
Gloria unlocked her phone and showed us the messages.
There were eleven in total, starting seven weeks earlier.
Most were short.
A voice resembling Molly begged for help, referred to her grandmother’s favorite soup, and asked her not to trust police or social workers.
The tenth message named me.
The eleventh directed Gloria to search my garage on Thursday afternoon.
The schedule was too exact to be coincidence.
“Who told you to open my gate?”
I asked.
Gloria twisted a tissue.
“Derek said a neighbor had seen Molly going inside.”
“Did he show you a photograph?”
“No.
He said there wasn’t time.”
Marian’s expression hardened.
“Where was Derek when you got that message?”
“At the hardware store, he said.”
I remembered his truck arriving minutes after the officers.
For the first time, I considered that he might have been monitoring the result.
Mina asked whether Gloria had sent any money in response to the recordings.
