A note at the bottom read: FINAL SCENE REQUIRES NATURAL RESPONSE.
Priya examined the sheet without touching it. “That’s the whole plan.”
“Not exactly,” Mara said. “They expected to get a reaction. But why send me a proof now?”
The cyclist said the parcel had been collected that morning from a commercial copy shop. The sender had paid cash. He had only been instructed to deliver it before noon.
Mara photographed the packaging and called Holt. Within minutes the officer asked her to leave the parcel untouched until it could be collected. Alma placed it in a plastic document tray and turned the tray away from the children arriving for afternoon activities.
“Who is supposed to see the last scene?” Mara asked Priya.
“The people attending tonight’s preview.”
“Then they don’t just want to surprise me. They want to show what happens when someone believes she is being watched.”
Priya looked at the image of the broken window. “And if you’d been hurt?”
Mara didn’t answer. Simon had written the injury out of his plan. In a storyboard, broken glass was a thrilling visual effect. On her floor it had been sharp, chaotic, and close enough to her face to leave a nick in her sleeve. He had designed a scene while refusing to acknowledge the actual person standing in it.
On their way back to Priya’s apartment, they passed the old playfield. Children in striped jerseys were practicing soccer beneath the supervision of two exhausted parents. Mara watched a goalkeeper dive into the grass and get up laughing, his teammates shouting approval. There was risk in ordinary life, she thought. But there was a profound difference between choosing to join a game and finding yourself used as a piece in somebody else’s game without knowing the rules.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Priya observed.
“I want to be angry at Willa,” Mara said. “I am angry. But somebody frightened her with a story about a child. She thought she could interrupt it by doing exactly what he asked.”
“Being frightened doesn’t make her choice safe.”
“I know. I also know how easily people follow a confident person who claims to be protecting somebody.”
Priya stopped at the crossing. “What will you do if you see Simon tonight?”
“Tell the police what he did. Not give him the performance he wants.”
“He may try to provoke you.”
“Then I will be boring,” Mara said.
Priya gave a surprised laugh, the first honest laugh either had managed since Thursday. The traffic light changed. They crossed together, carrying the uneasy knowledge that a person could be ordinary, frightened, angry, and brave in the same afternoon.
Chapter Six: The Woman in the Blue Coat
Owen’s mother arrived at the library shortly after noon. Her name was Teresa Bell. She wore the blue coat Mara remembered and carried an oversized canvas tote filled with schoolbooks. At her side walked Owen, the boy in the photographs, who looked younger than his twelve years but stood with the composed attention of somebody used to adults discussing him in front of him.
Mara greeted them in the empty reading room. Teresa refused coffee and asked for the door to remain open.
“I don’t want another meeting where someone tells me my son is part of an artistic experiment,” she said.
Mara immediately understood this was not the first confrontation. “I’m sorry the photographs were used without your permission.”
“That’s the smallest part of it.”
Owen looked at the pictures on Mara’s phone. He pointed at one showing the red wagon.
“I took that,” he said.
Teresa turned to him. “When?”
“Tuesday. At the house.”
Mara’s throat tightened. “You were in my yard?”
Owen nodded. “Simon said it was a location test for the story. He said the homeowner knew. I didn’t go in the house.”
“Did somebody take you there?”
“A woman from the company. Celia. She kept saying we only had fifteen minutes.”
“What did they want you to photograph?”
“Doors. The gate. The side window. The red wagon. Then Simon asked me to take pictures of where a person could stand without being seen from the road. I said that sounded strange. He told me it was for the mystery.”
Teresa pressed her lips together. “He had promised there wouldn’t be anything frightening. Owen likes photography. That’s why we agreed to the first workshop. When they started asking him to record real houses, I stopped it.”
Owen lifted his sleeve. “I didn’t take all the pictures. Some showed up after I left. Somebody else must have had the tablet.”
Mara asked about the uploads attributed to her name. Owen explained that the tablet automatically tagged images with the shared account, so everybody’s work looked as though it belonged to Mara. He thought that was a silly design but hadn’t known how to fix it.
Then he said something important. “Simon wanted me to learn one thing. He said the picture inside a picture tells the real story.”
“Like the reflection in my glass?” Mara asked.
Owen nodded. “He told us to look in mirrors and windows for things the photographer didn’t notice. But sometimes Simon put things there on purpose.”
Mara showed him the picture of Willa and the man with the black case. Owen studied it for several seconds.
“That’s the portable projector case,” he said. “They use it to make the painted doors look like they’re opening.”
“Do you know why it was in my yard?”
“I don’t know. But Simon took the old tablet after the workshop and said he’d return it.”
Teresa folded her hands tightly. “He knew where we lived. He knew Owen’s school. The first time I asked for the photos back, he smiled and said we had agreed to a permanent collaborative artwork. He spoke as if my son were a piece of furniture.”
“Did he threaten you?” Priya asked.
“Not directly. He sent a message saying the premiere depended on Owen being brave. He said several people would lose their jobs if we ruined it.”
Owen’s shoulders moved slightly under his coat. “He also said Willa had ruined everything.”
Mara looked up. “Why Willa?”
“She saw us at the house. She told Celia we shouldn’t be taking photographs of somebody else’s windows. Simon got angry. Then he told us Willa was making trouble because she wanted the attention for herself.”
Mara remembered the warning Willa had mouthed toward the camera. The older woman might have understood only part of the plot, but she had known someone intended to use Mara’s home for something concealed.
Holt arrived to interview Teresa and Owen. She listened carefully and wrote down their account. Then she pulled Mara aside.
“We found the case,” she said. “Rusk left it at the warehouse. It’s equipment for projecting moving images onto surfaces. But the police are more interested in the altered service door at your house.”
“Can you connect him to that?”
“Not yet. Someone from the company admits visiting your yard, but denies touching the door. We’re trying to establish who came after them.”
At that moment Alma hurried into the library holding a printed invitation. It had arrived with the afternoon post, addressed to the library’s volunteer storytelling committee. The Lost Room would open for a private preview that night. Under the venue address were four words: BRING YOUR OWN MEMORY.
Mara read the line, then looked at Owen.
“When he told you to look inside pictures,” she asked, “did Simon ever tell you what the last room was supposed to contain?”
Owen shook his head. “He said the last room wasn’t at Arcadia. He said the last room had to be real.”
Chapter Seven: The Wrong Door
By three o’clock, Holt had enough information to request a formal investigation of the attempted entry. Mara wasn’t given every detail, nor should she have been. She did learn that Rusk’s company had been operating the attraction under an unusually complicated agreement with an event sponsor. The premiere was meant to be filmed for prospective buyers of a traveling version of the game.
Mara’s house had not been leased to the company. But its exterior appeared in a promotional storyboard, drawn from photographs taken without her knowledge. Rusk had wanted a “real domestic environment” for the finale, not a convincing plywood imitation.
“He intended to use my home as part of his show,” Mara said.
Holt answered carefully. “That appears to be one possibility. We still have to prove intent.”
Mara did not need proof to know the idea repelled her. Someone had used her address as though a home were an empty stage available for rent by imagination alone.
At four, a temporary board replaced the plastic over her patio window. Tomas tightened the screws and stepped back. The boards were plain, unpainted wood. They made the house look shuttered and gave the living room an unfamiliar echo.
“You could stay somewhere else for another night,” Tomas suggested.
“I may,” Mara replied.
She wanted one clean hour in her house before leaving again. She gathered the glass from the rug with thick gloves, carried the pieces outside in a stiff cardboard box, and placed the brick on a shelf where police could collect it later if necessary. When she finished, she sat by the table and looked at the shared gallery again.
