The Last Address

Mara took Elias to Bellweather herself.

Not because he asked.

She called one morning and said, "I want to show you something before the hearing. Don't make it weird."

"That instruction lacks measurable criteria."

"Already weird. Excellent start."

They met at the station and walked uphill to the converted warehouse Elias had visited weeks earlier. Omar Bell was not on duty. Mara used the public entrance and stopped outside rather than going in.

"Top floor," she said. "You already know that."

"I went inside."

"I know."

Elias looked at her. "How?"

"The manager emailed an old forwarding address after your visit. It eventually reached me. He said some intense man with my face was asking about chin scars."

Elias winced. "That sounds worse summarized."

"Most of your behavior does."

She smiled, then looked up at the windows.

"I lived here eleven months. First place that felt mine."

"Was the cat real?"

Mara laughed. "Omar remembered the cat?"

"Possibly your neighbor's."

"Mine. Her name was Evidence."

Elias stared.

"I'm joking. Her name was Poppy."

"I genuinely hate you."

"I know."

They walked around the building toward the river. Mara pointed to a supermarket. "I worked there for six weeks before Tess got me freelance transcription work. That cafe used to be a pharmacy. I hated the pharmacist because he pronounced my surname like Astor and corrected me when I corrected him."

The details were aggressively ordinary. Elias wanted to record them. He kept his phone in his pocket.

"Why show me?"

Mara considered. "Because you found this place through a payment and a height mark and a rental record. You were turning it into evidence again. I wanted you to see that it was just somewhere I lived."

They reached the bench overlooking the river where Elias had sat during his first visit.

Mara sat beside him.

"I was happy here sometimes," she said. "Also lonely. Also furious. I had a terrible mattress. Poppy destroyed a curtain. I dated a woman called Rachel for four months and broke up with her because she wanted to move to Manchester. I got food poisoning from the restaurant you walked past on the way here. None of that is in your archive."

Elias looked at the river.

"I didn't know you dated women."

"I dated people. Don't make it into a category project."

"I'm not."

"Your eyebrows are."

He laughed.

Mara continued. "The point is, I wasn't waiting to be found. That's the part I need you to understand before all this becomes public. I wasn't hiding in a room for fifteen years because Morrow stole my life. I had a life. Complicated, sometimes bad, often good."

"Do you regret leaving?"

"Some days."

"Do you regret not calling?"

"More days."

"Would you do it again?"

Mara looked at him. "There you are."

"What?"

"Trying to turn fifteen years into one verdict."

Elias smiled faintly. "Occupational damage."

"Family damage."

They sat quietly.

A dog ran along the riverbank carrying a stick twice the width of its body. After a while Mara said, "The first year, I used to write letters to you."

Elias turned.

"Never sent them."

"Do you still have them?"

"Some."

He waited.

Mara raised an eyebrow. "Good restraint."

"I'm suffering."

"Excellent."

"Will you ever let me read them?"

"Maybe."

"Okay."

She looked almost disappointed that he did not push.

"You're making this difficult," she said.

"Apparently growth is irritating."

"Extremely."

Before they left, Mara took him to a small secondhand shop near the station. She searched a shelf of kitchenware and picked up a plain white ceramic cup.

"This is almost like the one from the video," she said.

Elias looked at it.

"Almost?"

"The handle was thinner."

"You're sure?"

Mara laughed.

"No."

She put it back.

That was the whole lesson.