Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Yellow Coat
The woman appeared at the end of the block on a Thursday afternoon, wearing a yellow raincoat bright enough to be seen through the rain.
Mara noticed her because the woman stood beneath the dead maple tree and looked directly at the house. She did not wave. She did not walk. She simply watched.
Mara stood behind the living-room curtain, holding her breath.
When Owen returned, the woman was gone.
“Do you know someone who wears yellow?” Mara asked.
He was removing his boots. “What kind of question is that?”
“There was a woman outside.”
“A neighbor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
He left the boots beside the mat and inspected the curtain. “You were watching people again.”
“She was watching us.”
“You need to stop scaring yourself.”
He said it gently, which meant the conversation was over.
The next morning, Owen took her to a charity luncheon at the Port Mercy Yacht Club. His company had renovated the club’s kitchen, and the board wanted to thank him. Mara wore a navy dress that no longer fastened at the waist. Owen had selected it and told her the high collar made her look elegant.
At the luncheon, he was adored. He opened doors, refilled water glasses, and told the mayor that Mara had “the patience of a saint.” When people asked about the baby, he answered before she could.
“A girl,” he said. “We’re naming her June.”
Mara had not agreed to that name.
Across the table, a woman with cropped silver hair studied her. After dessert, she approached while Owen was speaking with a contractor.
“I’m Celia Voss,” she said. “I knew Owen’s father.”
Mara smiled politely. “He died before I met Owen.”
“Yes.” Celia lowered her voice. “Your husband told everyone he was an only child.”
Mara felt the room tilt. “He is.”
“That’s what he told you?”
Before Mara could answer, Owen appeared at her shoulder. His hand settled on the back of her chair.
“Celia,” he said. “Still collecting old stories?”
“Some stories collect themselves.”
His fingers tightened against the chair. “Mara, we should go.”
In the car, rain struck the windshield in hard diagonal lines.
“Who is Celia?” Mara asked.
“A woman who likes attention.”
“What did she mean about your family?”
“She’s confused.”
“Did you have a sister?”
Owen’s hands remained steady on the wheel. “No.”
“A half sister?”
He braked at a yellow light. “You’re going to believe a stranger over me?”
“I’m asking.”
“You’re accusing.”
He drove the rest of the way in silence.
At home, Mara went to the bathroom and locked the door. She opened the phone and typed Celia Voss into a search engine. The results loaded, then disappeared. A notification appeared: Screen time limit reached.
She had never set a screen time limit.
Mara took the old camera from the linen closet and photographed the phone screen. Then she searched from the nursery monitor’s tablet, which was not connected to Owen’s account.
Celia Voss was a retired family-court investigator. Her name appeared in a 2011 article about a child custody case in which a mother had accused a local contractor of controlling her finances and isolating her from friends. The contractor’s name was redacted.
The article included one sentence that made Mara’s skin prickle: “The respondent’s younger half sister provided a statement, later withdrawn.”
There was a photograph beside the story. Celia stood outside the courthouse. A blurred teenage girl in a yellow raincoat stood behind her.
Mara enlarged the image.
She recognized the woman from the maple tree.
That night, Owen made tea and brought it to the bedroom. “You’ve been distant.”
“I’m pregnant. I’m tired.”
“You’re keeping things from me.”
The tea trembled in her hand. “What do you think I’m keeping?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I want us to be honest. No secret calls. No searching my name. No letting strangers fill your head with garbage.”
“Did you have a sister?”
He looked at her for a long time.
“Her name was Wren,” he said at last. “She died when she was seventeen.”
Mara had not expected a partial truth.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was painful.”
“Celia said—”
“Celia blames me.” His voice broke perfectly. “Wren ran away from home after we fought. I was sixteen. I told her to leave me alone. She got into a car with someone she didn’t know.”
Mara’s suspicion stumbled beneath the weight of his grief.
He reached for her hand. She let him take it, though every nerve in her body wanted to pull away.
“I couldn’t save her,” he whispered. “I won’t fail our daughter.”
Later, in the dark, Mara wrote one sentence on a recipe card.
May you like
Wren was not a car accident, or Owen is lying about something else.
She placed the card beside the memory cards. Outside, a yellow shape moved past the window and vanished into the rain.
