Chapter 3 - Ethan’s Name
Emma did not scream.
That would have been easier.
Instead, she stared at Ethan from the hospital bed as if a piece of him had quietly disappeared.
“You ordered it?”
“No.”
His answer came instantly.
Too instantly.
Detective Bell noticed.
Emma noticed too.
Ethan stepped toward the bed.
“I didn’t.”
Bell placed the pharmacy record between them.
Four months earlier Emma’s physician had discontinued the medication after it made her dizzy.
Three weeks ago, a refill request had been submitted through the Parker household health account.
The account covered Emma, Lily and Ethan.
The login required Ethan’s credentials.
The prescription was picked up from a private pharmacy six miles from the house.
Not delivered.
Collected.
“Where were you that day?” Bell asked.
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t know.”
Bell gave him the date.
His face changed.
Emma saw.
“You remember.”
“I was at the office.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
Bell said nothing.
Ethan looked at her.
“What?”
“Your building pass shows you left at 3:11.”
“So?”
“The medication was collected at 3:42.”
The hospital room became unbearably quiet.
Emma pulled her hand away when Ethan tried to touch it.
“I didn’t pick it up.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
Bell asked for his phone.
He handed it over voluntarily.
His calendar showed a private meeting from 3:30 to 4:15.
No location.
No title.
Only three letters.
G.P.R.
Emma stared.
“What is that?”
Ethan did not answer.
Bell repeated:
“What is G.P.R.?”
“Something unrelated.”
Emma laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You keep saying unrelated every time something looks like it involves you.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“I was meeting someone because I was worried about you.”
Emma’s eyes widened.
Bell waited.
Finally Ethan said:
“A private investigator.”
“Why?”
“Because things kept happening in the house.”
Emma went still.
“What things?”
“Food being moved. Medication missing. Doors unlocked that I knew I’d locked. My mother accusing you. You accusing her.”
“So you investigated me?”
“I investigated everyone.”
Emma looked wounded.
Ethan looked ashamed.
Bell asked for the investigator’s name.
“Gabriel Price.”
G.P.R.
Within an hour, Bell confirmed the meeting.
Ethan had not picked up the prescription.
His timeline placed him across town.
But someone had used his account.
And someone had his login.
Ethan changed it immediately.
That should have relieved him.
It did not.
Because the investigator had photographs.
Three weeks of them.
Grace Parker arriving at the house.
Eleanor entering Emma’s bedroom.
Emma throwing something into an outside bin after midnight.
Lily standing alone in the kitchen talking to someone through the back door.
And Ethan himself unlocking the pantry at 6:12 one morning.
Emma pointed at the image.
“What were you doing?”
“Checking something.”
“What?”
He hesitated again.
Bell noticed.
Emma whispered:
“You still aren’t telling me everything.”
Ethan looked toward the door.
“My mother said food kept disappearing.”
“That sounds like Eleanor.”
“She thought you were replacing it.”
Emma stared.
“And what did you think?”
“I didn’t know.”
Bell leaned back.
“Did your investigator find anything?”
Ethan looked at the photographs scattered across the small hospital table.
“He found Grace.”
Emma frowned.
“Your sister?”
Grace Parker had always been the quiet one.
Soft voice.
Loose cardigans.
The person who remembered Lily’s school plays and brought Emma tea when Eleanor’s visits became too much.
The person who had sat beside Emma two nights earlier and told her:
You don’t have to keep proving you’re strong.
Ethan tapped one photograph.
Grace was standing outside the same private pharmacy where Emma’s discontinued prescription had been collected.
Timestamp:
3:46 p.m.
Emma’s mouth opened.
“She picked it up?”
Bell shook her head.
“We don’t know yet.”
But Ethan was no longer looking at the pharmacy.
He was looking at something tucked under Grace’s arm.
A pale-blue paper bag.
May you like
The same color as the small bag Eleanor had carried into the living room before forcing Emma to eat.
And suddenly the most harmless person in the Parker family no longer looked harmless at all.
