I lifted the receiver. My fingers were stiff and cold as I dropped a dime into the slot and dialed the seven digits I had known since childhood—the direct line to my sister Claire's house on the ridge road.
Claire was the one who had dropped me off at the courthouse on Tuesday morning after my heater core blew. Claire had my spare house key, my dog, and my mother's cedar chest in her spare bedroom.
The phone rang four times. Each ring sounded like a dull hammer striking tin.
"Hello?" Claire’s voice came through, breathless and thin, accompanied by the background hum of a television news broadcast.
"Claire," I whispered, pressing my mouth close to the receiver so the truckers wouldn't hear. "Listen to me. It's Nora. I'm alive. I'm at Cal's diner on Route 9."
There was no scream. There was no gasp of relief, no flood of tears.
There was only a sudden, suffocating silence that stretched so long I could hear the faint buzz of the telephone wire vibrating in the freezing wind along the highway poles.
"Nora?" Claire’s voice didn't rise. It went dead, flat, hollowed out by fear or something much worse. "Nora, where did you get this number? Where are you calling from?"
"I'm at the diner," I repeated, my heart dropping like lead through my ribs. "Miller ran me off the road into the creek. He staged the wreck, Claire. He has a death certificate already stamped by Peake. He's outside the diner right now trying to keep me from getting to the state police."
"Nora, please," Claire said, her voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Stop talking. Just stop. Travis was here yesterday morning. He brought Sheriff Boyd and the paperwork from the county clerk."
"What paperwork?" I gripped the plastic receiver until my knuckles ached. "Claire, what did you sign?"
"He said you had an episode at the courthouse," Claire sobbed, the tears finally breaking through, but they weren't tears for my survival. They were the frantic, guilty tears of someone who had already given away the house while the owner was still breathing. "He said you burned the road ledgers and drove into the ravine on purpose. He said... he said if I didn't sign the emergency estate release, the county would seize mother's land trust to pay for the environmental cleanup in the creek. He told me you were dead, Nora! He showed me the coroner's seal! He said the body was at Waynesboro morgue and I couldn't view it until the state closed the inquiry!"
"And you believed him?" My voice shook. "You didn't ask to see me? You didn't call the hospital?"
"He had the keys, Nora!" Claire cried out. "He had your car keys and your desk keys! He gave me mother's gold locket out of your purse! He said you left it on the seat for me before you took the curve! I had to sign the release... they were going to put a lien on the timber ridge by noon today!"
The air went completely out of my lungs.
The locket hadn't been in my purse. My mother's gold locket had been locked inside my metal safe-deposit box at Mercer County Trust—a box that required two keys to open: my personal key from my desk drawer, and the probate executor's authorization.
Miller hadn't just staged my crash to bury a forged timber deed. He had used my fake death to get Claire to open the estate box, stripping every original deed and survey map my family had held on the Blue Creek timberline for seventy years.
"Claire," I whispered, my voice turning to cold iron. "Who is at the house with you right now?"
Another silence hit the wire, heavy and guilty.
"Sheriff Boyd is in the kitchen, Nora," Claire whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the line. "He's drinking coffee with Dale. They told me... they told me if you called, I had to keep you on the line until Travis could secure the scene."
I slammed the heavy black receiver down onto the cradle.
The bell inside the telephone gave one sharp, final chime that died instantly in the cold diner air.
Cal was watching me from across the counter, his eyes fixed on my face. He didn't ask what she said. The gray look on my skin told him everything he needed to know about the people waiting on the ridge road.