Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

chatting up the guard. I clicked the lock open and pulled slowly. No luck. The door squawked. I yanked it and ran, my heels slipping on the snow-covered slate. I fell to one knee, the file skittering out of my hands. Behind me, I heard the inner door slam open and the guard shout. I scrambled up, grabbed the file, and skidded around to the front of the house as a group of people came out the front door. I inserted myself into their posse as if I’d walked out with them, brushing at the snow on my hands. Richard appeared magically behind me carrying my coat, which he casually draped over the envelope in my arms. “I’ll call Paul later,” he muttered, shepherding me toward the car. He had just turned the key in the ignition when the back door opened and Paul got in. “Leaving me behind?”

“Shut the door,” Richard growled. The cop was headed down the path toward us, waving his flashlight like a baton. “Stop the car,” he yelled.

Richard pretended not to hear him, but he couldn’t go anywhere until the Mercedes in front of us moved, and the Mercedes couldn’t move until the Lincoln Navigator in front of it finished maneuvering out of its parking space. The officer started to run. He shouted, “I’ve got your license plate number.”

“Did you steal her file?” demanded Paul, peering over the front seat at the envelope. “Hand it over.”

“That cop can’t see me giving you anything.”

“Put it around the seat. Hurry!”

I slipped the envelope between the door and the front seat. Paul yanked it through.

“What are you doing!”

“Pretending to be the therapist I am.” He pulled the file out and started flipping pages. “You’ve taken his shadow notes.”

“Shadow notes?”

“Process notes for his use only. Stuff that he’s kept out of the public record.”

The officer tapped on my window.

“We’re busted. Chief DuPont is going to kill me,” I whispered.

Paul lowered the back window. “Yes, officer? Can I help you?”

“Step out of the car. All of you.”

“Whatever for?”

The cop looked at me. “Ms. Montague knows what for.”

“Clara?” Paul looked shocked. “Really, officer. She just lost a close family friend. Can’t it wait?”

“Step out of the car, folks.”

Richard put the car in park, opened the door and stepped out. He’d managed to swing it partly into traffic behind the Mercedes, which now could accelerate away, since the Lincoln had finally gotten itself extricated. The BMW behind us honked, trying to edge by. Richard had pulled out just far enough to block him. A long line of cars joined the chorus. The officer looked exasperated. “Sir, you’ll have to move your car, so traffic can move.”

“You told me to step out of the car.”

“Don’t be difficult, sir.”

The officer, McNulty according to his name tag, extended his hand to Paul. “I’ll take that file, thanks.”

“These are confidential notes on a therapy patient.”

“I believe Ms. Montague took them from Dr. Woodward’s files downstairs.”

“Do you have proof of that?”

“I have enough. You’ll need to come down to the station and tell Chief DuPont why you were rooting around in Dr. Woodward’s confidential files in a crime scene.” The chorus of horns sounded like a symphony of coked-up ducks. “Ms. Montague can ride with me, and you can follow behind.”

I felt sick. The chief listened to Officer McNulty’s story and put me in a cell across the aisle from Mother. Bailey reassured me it would take a couple hours at most to get me out, but I felt as trapped as I had when I lived at home, before father died. Why was it so easy for me to slip back into that feeling—as if coming home immediately shaved off adulthood and left me an awkward and desperate ten-year-old trying to figure it all out. Sometimes, I felt as though I were a blank space in the room. Mother could see everyone else, hear them, interact with them, but I was the margins at the edge of the page, the spaces between the type, the negative shape in the painting: there but not; there but only if you knew how to look.

She only saw me, it seemed, when she was angry, and she was angry now. Although she held back everything else, she never held back her anger. As a child, it took me days to get back into her good graces. Transgressions as minor as wearing the wrong clothes or addressing a maid in the wrong tone of voice would set her off. I wondered now about the benefit of those good graces. It never seemed to soften the critical spotlight she aimed in my direction, harshly illuminating every flaw she could find, as if pointing them out might make me become what she wanted.

She gripped the bars across the way, holding herself ­rigidly upright, and let fly: “Really, Clara. What did you think you were doing?” Each word had an exclamation point after it.

Sitting in the cell’s one wooden chair, I spoke past the knots in my stomach. “You refuse to talk to me.”

“Don’t think that’s going to change—not with impulsive behavior like this from you.” It was a relatively minor hit, given Mother’s capabilities.

I snapped back. “Unlike you getting up at a memorial service and claiming you knew who the killer was? Making us both targets? I’m sure you thought through the consequences of that carefully, especially since I was the one exposed, while you’re cozy in your safe little cell.” I’d learned from the best.

The edges of her anger softened, surprising me. “Oh, Clara. This won’t do us any good. Why did you come home? Why now, after all this time?”

I bit my lip and went for it. “I’m having dreams. About you. Just like the ones I had about father.”

She turned her face away. “Not this again. Clara, dreams don’t mean anything. They’re the body’s way of warming the mind up for the day. Look it up. The New York Times “Science” section did an article on it a