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The dogs and I head upstairs and go into the closet in the guest bedroom. I pull open the secret door and crawl inside the hidden space. The dim light from the bedroom doesn’t reach this far, but I’ve been in here so many times, I know where the light cord is, even if I can’t see it.
I tug on the cord, and a soft glow spills from the bare bulb. The hiding space makes me think of the cellar in Jacques’s barn, where he and Iris hid downed Allied pilots and where Johann hid his Jewish friends.
Was this space added in case Iris ever needed to hide? Maybe lifelong paranoia was a side effect of being an SOE agent. Or was it used for other purposes? Like hiding her journals, the heart pendant, and the medal?
I still don’t know where the pendant and medal are from. I’ve never been one to jump to the end of a book and read it first. That’s what searching for the medal online feels like. Skipping to the end of the story, and then reading the book, even though you know how it ends.
The medal I can only guess has something to do with her time in France as an SOE agent. I haven’t looked it up online. I’m hoping Iris’s journals will reveal how she ended up with it.
Bailey and Butterscotch sniff the floor around the edges of the enclosed space.
“Remember,” I tell them, my voice a hushed, playful tone. “You can’t tell anyone about this place. It’s special. Maybe not as much as Narnia, but it’s still special.” I remove my laptop from next to the cardboard box and crawl out of the space. The two dogs follow me.
I close the secret door, ensuring the bookshelf is flush with the wall.
In the kitchen, I place the laptop on the table and turn it on. I go through the photos I took today with my phone, send some of them to the laptop, and make notes of what I could have done better. I also create a list of the photos I want to edit. They’re the photojournalistic images I took while no one was paying attention to me. All were taken prior to Troy’s arrest.
I skip through a few photos until I land on the ones I took of Emily before we started our volunteer shift. She was laughing like she didn’t have a care in the world. The picture is timeless and gorgeous and will look great converted to black and white.
I flick to the next photo. Again, of Em. A few other people are also captured in the image. No one I recognize, other than Chief Wilson.
I hadn’t noticed he was watching me at the time. He’s at the edge of the frame, which is why I didn’t notice him when I took the picture. His expression…shit, his expression. It’s like he’s trying to peer through my layers, as if that would solve a riddle playing in his head.
He wouldn’t have realized at the time that I was taking photos, because I was aiming the camera at Emily and it appeared as if I was just checking something on my phone. It wasn’t obvious I was taking photos.
Why the hell was he even looking at me? Shit. Please tell me he hasn’t realized I’m Savannah.
He could be one of those idiots who believes the conspiracy theories that claim I really did kill my husband, a cop. Is that why he arrested Troy?
No. No. No. That doesn’t make sense. You can’t arrest someone because their girlfriend was wrongfully convicted for killing her husband.
Did the cop who saw me talking to Violet this morning have something to do with Chief Wilson watching me this afternoon? Or am I deluding myself, and he’s been watching me for a while now? Or was it just a coincidence?
My body trembles with me just thinking about the possible reasons for Chief Wilson’s presence in the picture.
I scoot off the chair and sink onto the kitchen floor. I wrap my arms around Bailey, trying to calm the trembling.
Once I’ve somewhat regained control of myself, I sit back on the chair and swipe through the next few shots on my phone. A few frames later, the chief of police isn’t looking at me. He’s talking to a white man with light brown hair. I don’t recognize him. They could be talking about a million different things, including where’s a good place in town to eat.
But something about their expression suggests whatever their conversation is about, it’s deadly serious.
You’re reading too much into it. A good reporter would never make assumptions based on a photo.
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but that adage only works if I know the meaning behind the picture. Misinterpret it, and I could make things so much harder for myself.
But even knowing this, I can’t shake the feeling I haven’t misinterpreted anything.
But really—what am I planning to do? Take the photo to the police station—and then do what with it?
The last thing I want is to go there and risk people recognizing my face. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself when it comes to the men and women in blue.
It’s not as if my going there will save Violet from her husband.
It’s not as if it will make things any easier for Troy.
27
Angelique
