The Woman in M-17

Ava pushed the boiler-room door inward.

The hinges gave a soft, wet squeal. Warm air touched her face—not the dead warmth of pipes, but the stale breath of a room sealed too long. Beneath it lay the smells of bleach, rust, and something medicinal.

A woman sat at a folding table beneath a bare bulb.

She was perhaps sixty, though the years had gathered unevenly around her. Her hair was white at the temples and cut bluntly at her jaw. She wore a gray cardigan buttoned to the throat, and one hand rested on a black telephone receiver. Its cord disappeared through a hole in the wall.

For several seconds neither of them moved.

Then the woman said, “You took your time.”

Ava kept one hand on the door. “Who are you?”

The woman looked past her, toward the hallway. “Is Martha still upstairs?”

“That depends on whether she’s waiting to hear you lie.”

A faint smile crossed the woman’s mouth. It held no amusement. “You sound like Helen.”

Ava stepped inside. The room was larger than she had expected. Shelves filled one wall, crowded with jars, old blankets, canned food, and cardboard boxes labeled in dates. Against another wall stood a narrow cot. Its sheets were clean. A battery lantern sat beside it, charged and ready.

The photograph from the phone came back to Ava: Belinda alive in this house, her red glove clutched against her chest. The room in the picture had been darker, but she recognized the pipes, the drain in the concrete, the little square window painted shut.

“You were here,” Ava said.

“I was in the house.”

“You were in the photograph.”

The woman’s eyes hardened. “Your mother showed you?”

“Helen is dead.”

That reached her. Her fingers tightened around the receiver, and the plastic creaked. “No.”

“She died three days ago.”

The woman lowered her head. For the first time, she looked old. “Then she finally stopped waiting.”

Ava crossed the room and took the receiver from her hand. It was connected to a small black box on the table, an old cellular repeater modified with wires and electrical tape. A green light blinked steadily.

“The phone calls,” Ava said.

“Some of them.”

“From this room?”

“From the house.”

“Why use Belinda’s name?”

The woman looked at her. “Because that was the only name anyone in this town still feared.”

Ava felt the answer settle between them, insufficient but true. “Your name.”

“June Marlow.”

The name struck with the quiet force of a door closing. The Marlow house had belonged to the Marlow family before the plant folded. June had been a nurse at the auto-parts plant clinic, according to one of Helen’s notes. She had treated workers for crushed fingers, chemical burns, panic attacks. She had also signed the intake sheet for an unnamed female patient on November eighteenth, 2009.

Ava remembered the line because Helen had underlined it twice.

“You treated Belinda,” Ava said.

June’s gaze shifted to the drain. “I treated the wound on her head. It was not as bad as they wanted everyone to believe.”

“Who brought her here?”

“Ray Cordero drove. Lucas Crane sat beside him. Tom Greer came in the back with Martha.”

“And you?”

“I owned the room.”

“No. You directed it.”

June did not deny it. “Belinda had seen something at the plant. A shipment being moved through the settling ponds. Ray’s trucks were carrying parts out after the plant closed, but that was not all they carried. She found the records. She said she would take them to the state.”

Ava stared at her. “So you imprisoned a seventeen-year-old girl to protect stolen auto parts?”

“Not stolen parts.” June’s voice cracked. “Names. Payments. People who had been stealing from the closure fund for years. Men who could have gone to prison. Men who had children, mortgages, churches. Men who told themselves they were only borrowing from a company already dying.”

“Belinda knew.”

“Belinda knew enough.”

The room seemed to narrow around them. Above, somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked. Martha had not left. Or someone else had come in.

Ava leaned closer. “What did you do with Belinda?”

June’s face changed, and the answer seemed to take something from her before she spoke it.

“I let her out.”

The words were so small Ava nearly missed them.

“When?”

“The next morning.”

“Where did she go?”

“Home.”

Ava’s anger faltered. “Home?”

“Not to Martha. To the place she had been hiding before the party. She had a friend across the county. A girl named Elise.”

“And why did everyone say she ran away?”

“Because she did.” June reached beneath the table and brought out a manila envelope sealed with yellowing tape. “But she did not leave Frosthaven alone.”

Ava took it. Inside was a driver’s license, a bus ticket dated November 19, 2009, and a letter written in a slanted teenage hand.

She unfolded the letter.

*Helen,* it began. *If you are reading this, June failed to keep them away from me. Do not trust my mother. Do not trust Lucas. And do not let Ava come back here.*

Ava stopped reading.

At the bottom, beneath the signature, Belinda had written one final line:

*He knows who my father is.*

Behind Ava, the boiler-room door swung shut by itself.

June looked toward it, suddenly terrified. “You weren’t supposed to come alone,” she whispered.

From upstairs came the slow sound of someone descending the stairs.