Chapter 4 The First Move

Sleep never came, not really, just a thin, restless half-doze where the train ride kept replaying behind my eyelids like a loop I couldn't switch off.

Jane choosing the seat beside me when half the carriage sat empty. Jane never once checking her phone, not a single glance, not even the reflex check people do without thinking. Jane refusing a photo like it physically pained her. And that one question, dropped so casually I hadn't thought twice about it at the time.

Does your dad help? With the medication and everything?

Lying there in the dark, that question didn't feel casual anymore. It felt aimed.

By the time grey morning light crept through my curtains, I'd stopped pretending I might fall back asleep. I got up, showered on autopilot, and went downstairs to find Mum already at the table, looking better than she had in days, color back in her face, humming along to the radio like last night hadn't happened at all.

"Morning, sleepy," she said. "You look tired."

"Didn't sleep great."

"Everything okay?"

"Just school stuff." The lie came out smoother than I expected, and I hated how easy it was starting to feel.

I kept looking at the cushion where I swore I left my phone last night

It wasn't there.

For the tenth time since I'd woken up, I reached for it anyway before remembering Jane still had it.

I wondered if Marcus had already started texting.

He'd expect me to answer.

I never ignored him.

I closed my eyes.

He was going to worry.

Upstairs, I pulled out loose sheets from an old notebook and started writing, everything, the train, the bag, the photographs, Jane's voice on the phone, the address she'd given me. My hand cramped halfway through, but I kept going, because some part of me, the part that had stopped simply being scared and started thinking instead, understood that if something happened to me, somebody needed a trail to follow.

I folded the pages and slid them inside an old maths textbook I hadn't opened since year nine, then shoved the whole thing under my bed. I didn't see the photograph already lying there in the dark, the one that had slipped free two nights ago and never made it back into the pile.

Downstairs, the landline rang. I heard Mum answer it, heard her say, easy as anything, "Morning, Marcus. Oh, she left already, sweetheart, you know how she is, up before the sun," and I froze halfway down the stairs, because that meant Marcus was calling the house, which meant Marcus had tried calling me, and got worried enough to call the house, it was not a thing Marcus did.

I should have picked up. I didn't. I let Mum hang up and walked past the kitchen with my coat already half on, telling her I was meeting a friend before school, another lie stacked neatly on top of the last one.

My town looked different that morning. Every stranger seemed to be watching me. Every passing car made me wonder if Jane was inside. Every man in a grey coat made my stomach drop. A police car idled at a red light two streets from the station, and I actually slowed down, actually thought about it, about running straight to that window and telling them everything.

Your mother's next dose stays exactly where it is.

I kept walking.

The café sat tucked beside the station, warm light spilling out onto the pavement, the kind of ordinary place you'd never expect anything bad to happen inside. Somehow that made it worse. Jane sat at a corner table, a cup of tea in front of her, looking for all the world like a girl waiting for a friend.

"You got my drink," I said, sliding into the seat across from her, staring at the cup that was already there. Vanilla latte, extra shot, the exact thing I ordered every single time without fail. "I never told you that."

"No," Jane agreed. "You didn't."

She slid my phone across the table, and I grabbed it like it might disappear again if I didn't move fast enough.

"Where's the rest of it? The medication, all of it, not just…"

"I wanted to see if you'd follow instructions." She said it simply, like she was commenting on the weather. "You did. That's useful information."

"Useful for what?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "What is this? What do you want from me?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she tilted her head slightly, studying me the way you'd study a puzzle you already knew the shape of.

"What do you remember," she said, "about the day your father disappeared?"

The question landed like a slap. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Answer it."

"No." I planted my hands flat on the table. "You don't get to just, just show up and ruin my entire life and then ask me about my dad like we're having a normal conversation."

She only smiled, small and unreadable, and reached into her bag.

"I don't need your help today," she said. "I need information. Go home. Find your father's old study. Bring me everything you find." She set a single pill bottle on the table between us, just one, not the full set Mum needed. "No police. No lies."

"What happens if I say no?"

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"I think," Jane said, standing, smoothing her coat like she had somewhere else entirely to be, "you still believe this is your story."

She let that sit there a moment.

"It isn't."

Then she walked out, past the counter, past the window, out into the grey morning like she'd never been there at all.

I sat frozen for a long moment before I finally reached for the bottle, my hands unsteady, and it was only when I lifted it that I noticed something tucked beneath it on the table. A folded newspaper clipping, edges soft with age like it had been handled many times before.

I unfolded it with fingers that had gone numb.

LOCAL BUSINESSMAN STILL MISSING AFTER FIVE YEARS

Below the headline sat a photograph, the same man from the photographs in my backpack, the same face I'd seen lying motionless on concrete two nights ago.

Only now, he had a name printed clearly beneath his picture.

And it was a name I'd grown up hearing my mother whisper into the phone late at night, back when she still cried about him.

I knew that name.