Noah looked at her.
"Who was that person?" Callie asked.
"She couldn't remember."
"We need to get in contact with Seraphine again and find out who that friend of her mother was." Callie set her mug down. "Because we checked the security cameras at the hospital after Hailey went missing. She was seen leaving her room and heading into the staircase that went down to the basement. Then the cameras aren't working. The ones outside the exit doors were. She is never seen leaving that hospital." She paused. "So how did she get out unless someone took her out of there?"
Noah stared at her. The coffee in front of him had gone cold. Outside the window the parking lot was still and the mountains were still and the morning was doing what mornings do in the Adirondacks, holding itself together with light and silence while underneath it the ground was shifting.
"Let's go," he said.
Seraphine's studio was closed.The sign in the window said so and the lights inside were off and the door didn't move when Noah tried the handle. But through the glass he could see movement in the back, a shadow passing between the canvases stacked against the rear wall.
He knocked. Nothing. Knocked again.
"Seraphine. It's Noah Sutherland. I need a moment."
The shadow stopped moving. A long pause. Then footsteps, slow and reluctant, crossing the studio floor. The lock clicked and the door opened six inches. Seraphine stood in the gap, her hair pulled back, her eyes guarded. She looked thinner than the last time he'd seen her, though that might have been the light.
"My therapist isn't here," she said.
"I know. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"I've told you everything I can."
"Just a moment of your time. Please."
She studied him through the gap. Whatever she saw in his face was enough to make her step back and open the door the rest of the way, though she didn't invite them in so much as stop blocking the entrance. Noah and Callie stepped inside.
Seraphine retreated toward the back of the studio and leaned against the counter with her arms folded. Not hostile. Just done.
"You told us that you learned about the bog and about Derek Hollis through a friend of your mother's," Noah said. "Is there anything you can tell us about who this person was? What they looked like? Where they lived?"
Seraphine shook her head.
"Were they male or female?"
"Female."
"Do you remember anything about her? How old she was? What she did for work?"
"I was sixteen. I barely remember what she looked like. She came to me. She knew things about my mother that only someone close to her would know. That's all I can tell you." She looked at the floor. "I'm sorry. I wish I could help."
“Would your aunt Tabitha know who this woman was?"
Something dark crossed Seraphine's face. "Tabitha wouldn't tell you the truth if her life depended on it. And besides." She looked at Noah. "She's facing time, isn't she?"
"Yeah," Noah said. "She is."
The studio was quiet. The traffic outside moved at the pace of a town that didn't know what was underneath it. Callie looked at Noah. Noah looked at Seraphine. There was nothing left to ask that hadn't been asked.
"All right," Noah said. "Thank you."
He turned toward the door. Callie followed. They were almost to the threshold when Seraphine's voice came from behind them.
"She was a nurse."
Noah stopped. He turned around. "What?"
