Chapter 18 - Seven Girls
Rebecca already knew there had been seven families.
She did not know there had been seven girls.
The records had never presented them that way.
Children became case numbers.
Initials.
Custody outcomes.
Medical histories.
When we compared the old Safe Harbor files, a pattern appeared.
Seven girls between the ages of three and six.
All removed from their mothers.
All described as emotionally difficult.
All subjected to what the records called controlled sensory intervention.
“Laundry rooms,” Rebecca said.
Sloan nodded.
“Possibly.”
“Don’t say possibly.”
“We need evidence.”
Rebecca slammed the file shut.
“I was evidence.”
Sloan did not argue.
One girl had died as an adult.
Two could not be located.
Three refused contact.
The seventh was alive.
Her name was Emily Carter.
Thirty-nine years old.
Married.
Two children.
She lived ninety miles away.
When Rebecca called, Emily hung up.
Rebecca tried again.
“I’m Rebecca Voss.”
Silence.
Then Emily said, “Don’t ever call me.”
“You were at Safe Harbor.”
Click.
Rebecca sat staring at the phone.
“She knows.”
“Yes.”
“She remembers.”
“Probably.”
Rebecca called once more.
Emily answered without speaking.
Rebecca said, “Did they put you near a washing machine?”
The line stayed silent for so long I thought Emily had disconnected.
Then she whispered, “Top-loading.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
Emily continued.
“White.”
Another breath.
“Brown rust underneath the lid.”
Rebecca began crying.
Not loudly.
The same controlled crying from the tape.
Emily heard it.
“They told you not to make noise?”
Rebecca could not answer.
Emily said, “Me too.”
Three days later Emily came to the bookstore.
She did not enter through the back because the laundry room was there.
She admitted that immediately.
“I haven’t owned a washing machine in twenty years.”
Her husband took their clothes to a laundromat.
Her children believed she hated laundry.
She had never told them why.
“Sometimes,” Emily said, “I hear the spin cycle in my head before I sleep.”
Rebecca stared at her.
“I hear the lid.”
Emily nodded.
“I hear the latch.”
Different machines.
Same fear.
Emily remembered another person.
A social worker.
Not Lenora.
A woman named Margaret Dale.
“She watched.”
“Watched what?” Sloan asked.
Emily looked at Rebecca.
“When Lenora put us inside.”
The room went silent.
“Us?” I asked.
Emily nodded.
“Sometimes there were two girls.”
Rebecca stood.
“I don’t remember another child.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”
Emily removed a folded photograph from her purse.
Four girls stood outside Safe Harbor.
Rebecca was one of them.
Emily was another.
A tall woman stood behind them.
Not Lenora.
Margaret Dale.
Detective Sloan stared at the photograph.
“Margaret Dale died eleven years ago.”
Emily shook her head.
“No.”
May you like
“How do you know?”
“Because she came to my house last month.”
