Chapter 3 - The Locker at the Station
Capital Station was forty minutes north. Police met us in the parking lot before we'd even gotten out of the car.
Locker 218 sat in a narrow corridor beside the restrooms, one of a hundred identical gray doors. Reyes turned Caleb's brass key in the lock.
Inside: a gray hooded sweatshirt, a phone charger, and a phone I had never seen in my life.
He picked it up. Dead battery.
They plugged it in right there against the wall. When the screen finally lit up, there was no passcode.
The messages were still there, all of them, going back months. Most were between Caleb and a contact saved simply as "L." My son had been carrying on an entire secret conversation on a phone I never knew existed.
The oldest message was from four months before the trip.
*"It's Hannah. Did you get the new phone working?"*
Caleb had answered, *"Yeah. Mom doesn't know about this one."*
Hannah wrote back, *"Good. We can talk here now."*
Then, a few messages later: *"I think we're brother and sister."*
My hand flew to my mouth.
Reyes glanced at me. "Diane?"
I couldn't answer him. I couldn't do anything but stare at the screen.
Hannah had sent photos. One was of herself — seventeen, maybe, dark hair, a thin, guarded face. But it was her eyes that stopped my heart cold.
I'd seen those eyes before.
On Victor.
My ex-husband. The man I'd told my son had been dead for twelve years.
Another photo showed Victor holding a baby girl. A third showed him younger, standing beside me, back when I still thought I loved him.
Underneath, Caleb had written, *"My mom said he was dead."*
Hannah had answered, *"She lied."*
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I sat down hard on the cold station floor, right there in the corridor, because my legs simply stopped working.
For twelve years, I had believed one lie could keep my son safe forever.
