Chapter 4 - The Morning Train
At 6:10 a.m., the phone in my lap buzzed.
I was sitting in the vinyl armchair beside Caleb's bed. He was sleeping, his breathing slow and heavy, the pain medication having finally pulled him past the shivering stage. Tessa had checked his fingers half an hour ago and reported that the circulation was returning to the index and middle fingers, though the skin would peel by next week.
The caller ID read Aaron (Work Cell).
I pressed answer before the second ring.
"Clara?" Aaron’s voice was raspy, full of the gritty fatigue of a twelve-hour overnight freight run through the Pennsylvania hills. "Dad just called me. He... he sounded terrible."
I kept my eyes on Caleb's bandaged hand. "What did he tell you, Aaron?"
"He said there was a terrible accident," Aaron said, his breath hitching slightly. "He said Caleb was out in the yard looking for a lost toy after dark, and the storm knocked the power out so the security lights went off before he could find him. He said he searched the property for twenty minutes before he realized the boy had wandered down toward the road."
I didn't speak for five seconds. The silence over the fiber-optic line was thick enough to choke on.
"He lied to you," I said.
"Clara, look—Dad is seventy-one years old. He's shaking so hard he could barely hold his coffee cup when he called me from the diner down the road. He feels sick about it. He’s already talked to the doctor; he’s paying for the private room upgrade."
"Aaron," I said, my voice dropping into that low, level register that usually made him stop and check his gauges. "Check your email."
"I'm on the platform, Clara. The wind is freezing out here, and my connection is—"
"Check your email right now."
There was a rustle of heavy canvas—his work jacket—followed by the tap of fingers against glass. A minute passed. Then two. The only sound from Aaron's end was the distant rumble of an incoming commuter train and the harsh intake of breath.
"What is this?" Aaron whispered. His voice had lost all its professional fatigue; it sounded hollow, like a dry well. "These are the router logs from the porch unit."
"Look at the timestamp for the manual override," I said. "7:16 p.m. Seven minutes after Roland threw Caleb's backpack into the snowbank and locked the deadbolt."
"No," Aaron said automatically, the old reflex of defending his father kicking in like an engine governor. "Dad wouldn't... the app must have glitched during the voltage drop. The power substation in North Township blew a transformer around seven-thirty—"
"The substation blew at 8:12," I interrupted. "The log shows the override command came from a local IP address belonging to Roland's iPad, authenticated by his thumbprint. Not a voltage drop. Not a glitch. A deliberate, conscious choice."
Another long silence. In the background, an automated voice over the station loudspeaker announced the arrival of the westbound freight service, but Aaron didn't move. I could hear him leaning against a pillar or a railing, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"He told me he was looking for him," Aaron muttered, almost to himself. "He was crying, Clara. My father doesn't cry. He hasn't cried since my mother died."
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"He was crying because he got caught," I said. "And he's going to keep crying until you decide whether you're Caleb's father first or Roland's son first."
"I'm coming straight to the hospital," Aaron said. The line went dead before I could tell him that Roland was already waiting in the parking lot.
