“Are you going to sue everybody?”
“No.
I want facts to catch up with the story.”
Her silence frightened me more than the accusation.
“Can I still come Wednesday?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Mom wants to talk to you first.”
“That’s fair.”
After we hung up, I sat at my kitchen table beside a cup of coffee that had gone cold.
I had built my life around listening to recorded voices and separating signal from noise.
Now one recording had turned my own street into an audience eager for the wrong conclusion.
I called Tess’s mother, Claire, and told her everything I knew.
She asked sharp questions, but not unfair ones.
“Did you ever meet Molly alone?”
“No.”
“Did you have her voice stored on your computer?”
“Not knowingly.
I have a lot of community recordings from the public library, so I’ll check with the detective before touching anything.”
“Then I’ll tell Tess she can come after we speak to the school.”
I was grateful she did not make a promise about believing me forever.
Trust did not have to be theatrical to be real.
At noon, Mina called with permission from her client to share one piece of information.
“Molly has heard that you were accused,” she said.
“She wants you to know she never told her grandmother you held her anywhere.”
I sat down slowly.
“Is she all right?”
“She’s receiving support.
She doesn’t want her location shared.”
“Please tell her I won’t ask.”
Mina paused.
“There is something else.
Molly says the last place she left an audio recording was a public library workshop.”
I remembered the workshop at once.
Fourteen months earlier, I had taught teenagers how to edit interviews, remove microphone hiss, and build short documentary podcasts.
Molly had attended twice.
She had recorded a three-minute introduction about the things she loved in Bellhaven.
I could still remember her laughing when she accidentally said ‘railroad’ instead of ‘river road.’
The recording had been posted publicly on the library’s project page with a signed release.
Her voice was available to anyone with an internet connection.
I felt the chair beneath me grow uncomfortable.
“Somebody could have used that as source audio,” I said.
“That’s our concern.”
“Does she think Derek did it?”
“I can’t answer that question.”
“Understood.”
After the call I went to my garage and stood beneath Tess’s silver sign.
The yellow raincoat hung exactly where it had been the day before.
