Page 3 of Her Last Doubt

"Systematically."

"She keeps a list of the ones she's finished. Did you know that?”

“Yeah, I knew that, too.”

They shared a look that had weight to it, knowing that at some point, maybe a decision would have to be made. Was there any actual harm in Paige listening to those podcasts? No. Probably not. But given Rachel’s history with such cases, the situation had its own unique set of moral issues, she supposed.

Rachel had been home more this past year. That was the real reason for her concern over the podcast, if she was being honest with herself. She was noticing things she'd missed when the cases were consuming her, or when the Cody Austin situation had been at its worst, or during the long gray stretch before that when she'd been sick and then slowly not sick and then slowly learning to be a person again. Paige had grown up inside all of that. The girl in the living room with her notebook and bloody podcasts was the product of years Rachel hadn't been fully present for. And now maybe she was overcompensating a bit.

The past four years had been quieter from a professional standpoint. Not uneventful, by any means, though. She was still with the Bureau, still catching cases with Novak, still putting in the hours. But nothing had come at her the way the old cases had. The closest thing to dangerous in recent memory was a terrorism arrest eight months ago that had gone sideways when the suspect pulled a weapon during transport, and even that had resolved in minutes, three agents unhurt and one very surprised man in handcuffs on the sidewalk. She'd filed the report and gone home for dinner.

She still volunteered at the hospice twice a week. That had started as something she'd needed and had become something she simply did, a part of the week she didn't question. She had a patient now, Eleanor, eighty-three years old and sharper than most people half her age. They had become fast friends, and Rachel loved speaking to Eleanor as she worked her way methodically through a stack of novels she'd always meant to read. They talked about books and Eleanor's late husband, and whether the hospital cafeteria's food had truly always been as bad as it currently was. It was the part of her week that felt the most like herself.

“Okay,” Jack said from behind her. “Dinner’s ready.”

Jack served the pasta and called Paige in from the living room. She came without argument, notebook closed and earbuds tucked into her hoodie pocket. She sat down across from Rachel with the manner of someone who had graciously agreed to table the hostilities.

As they ate, Paige talked about a history project she was struggling with at school. Her talkative nature had never left her, so about half of the conversation at the dinner table most nights was covered by her. Jack talked about a training exercise at the field office that had apparently involved more paperwork than anyone had anticipated. Rachel listened to both of them and was glad for the noise of it, the ordinary percussion of a family at dinner.

At one point Paige said, "Did you know that in most domestic homicide cases, the delay between the last known contact and the discovery of the body is typically twenty-two to thirty hours?"

Jack looked at Rachel. Rachel looked at Paige.

"Where did you read that?" Rachel asked. She chose this over the first response that came to her mind. Of course I knew that. You know what I do for a living, right?

"The podcast,” Paige said. “Well, the study they cited. I looked it up."

"You looked up the study."

"I wanted to see their methodology." Paige speared a piece of pasta. "Their sample size was kind of small, actually. I'm not sure the finding is that generalizable."

Rachel set her fork down, trying her best not to look impressed. She looked over to Jack and saw that he was wrestling with something very similar.

Later, after Paige had gone upstairs, Rachel stood at the sink rinsing dishes and Jack leaned against the counter beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. She handed him plates and he loaded the dishwasher in the slightly incorrect way he always did. Rachel had decided years ago not to comment on it anymore.

"She's going to be you," he said. “You know that, right?”

"Don't say that."

"I mean it as a compliment."

Rachel handed him the pasta pot. "I know you do. But…I don’t know how to feel about that. I mean…she gets that morbid curiosity streak from me, one hundred percent."

She knew this was true, and it did something to her that she wouldn't have been able to explain cleanly to Jack. It was a strange, warm blade that cut in two directions at once. She didn’t like the thought of Paige with that focus and relentlessness Rachel had lived with herself for forty-three years.

She knew it could be a blessing in other areas of life. The focus and attentiveness could get Paige far in whatever she chose to do.

But for Rachel, she simply hadn't decided yet whether it was a gift or a warning.

CHAPTER TWO

The hospice Rachel had been volunteering at for the better part of four years occupied the ground floor of a converted Victorian on Redmond Avenue. Rachel had always thought it was a remarkable building, and that whoever had overseen the renovation had understood that the people inside didn't need to be reminded they were in a medical facility. The ceilings were high, the woodwork original, and the windows were large enough to let in real light. There were actual curtains rather than blinds. The floors creaked in the hallways. It smelled of coffee and, faintly, of whatever someone had brought in from a bakery that morning.

Rachel had been coming here twice a week for years, and she still noticed those things each time she walked in. She noticed them because she remembered what she'd thought, during the worst of it, when the tumor was there and the prognosis was careful and hedged and nobody would quite meet her eyes. She had thought about places like this. She had thought about them with a specific, private terror she'd never fully described to anyone, not even Jack. The creaking floors and the real curtains mattered because they were the difference between a place a person could bear and a place a person couldn't.

Eleanor Lewis was in Room 7. When Rachel knocked on the door and stepped inside, she saw Eleanor in the bed nearest the window. She was eighty-three, and she had been declining fast for the past two weeks, faster than anyone had projected. The woman who had arrived in September with opinions about everything and a waiting list of novels she intended to get through had grown smaller and quieter in ways that were difficult to watch. But Rachel had grown close to her over the past few weeks and would not stop watching.

She was sleeping when Rachel came in. Rachel sat in the chair beside the bed and didn't say anything. The room held the stillness of a place where sleeping was serious business. There was a strange, almost stale quality to the air. Outside the window, Redmond Avenue was looking as glorious as ever. The oak tree at the edge of the lawn had thinned considerably, dropping leaves in a steady, persistent way, reminding the city that Fall was here and winter was being a bit too eager to hurry along.