Nick
I've had her file for six days.
It's thinner than I expected it to be. Paper, because paper doesn't leave a trail in anyone's cloud. Manila folder, fastened with a single black clip, sitting dead center on the desk in my study like a loaded gun.
The desk is walnut. The study looks out on the east lawn. There's a Scotch at my elbow that I haven't touched because I want my head clear. I want to read her and learn her sand also stay alert incase my father needs me, or worse.
He has continued to deteriorate. I haven’t seen him awake and alert for two days now. He hasn’t eaten for longer. The last sip of water he had was yesterday morning, according to Lucia.
My arm aches under the dressing. I haven't taken the pain pills. I want to feel it. Pain is a map back to the moment, and that moment is the only thing I've wanted to be inside of since it happened.
I open the folder.
Sadie Elizabeth Jenkins. Twenty-six. Born Millbrook, Ohio. Five-four. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Type one diabetic, diagnosed age nine.
That's the first page. That's the skeleton. I've read it twice already and I keep coming back to the diabetic line like I'm going to find something new in it.
Dmitri pulled all available footage of the wreck. There’s one clear angle of her car, the way she climbed out of it, the way she slid something onto her tongue before walking to the first car.
I've watched her walk into that wreckage eleven times.
I turn the page.
Mother: Ellen Jenkins, Teacher. Deceased, 2019, breast cancer. Father: Robert Jenkins, mechanic. Deceased, 2022, heart attack. No siblings. No living grandparents. One aunt, estranged.
She's alone. That's not a surprise. I knew it before Dmitri confirmed it, knew it from the Corolla packed to the ceiling with a mattress wedged against the back window and nobody in the passenger seat to keep her company on a long drive.
I knew it from the way she didn't call anybody at the scene.
She just sat there with her juice box, waiting to be let go.
I turn the page.
Employment: Medical assistant, most recently at Parkside Family Practice. Working for Dr Aisha Mehta. Moving to Metro City Practice ASAP.
Her resume follows. Her grades from school, her time at college cut short probably due to her mother’s illness. She wanted to be a nurse.
I turn the page.
Previous residence: 412 Hollow Creek Road, Millbrook. Lease held jointly with Jason Michael Harrow, age 31. Vehicle: Toyota Corolla, registered in her name. Departed Millbrook. Did not notify Harrow of intended departure.
Jason Michael Harrow.
I look at the name on the page for a long time. Until the letters stop being letters and start being an object I can weigh in my hand.
The next page is his.
Jason Michael Harrow. Six-one, one-ninety.
Arrests, two. Both DUIs, both pled down.
One protective order filed against him by a prior girlfriend, subsequently withdrawn.
Employment: bartender, Rusty's Tap Room, Millbrook.
History of credit card fraud against Jenkins, documented in her 2024 tax filings as an identity-theft amendment.
There's a photo clipped to the file.
He has a face I've seen on a thousand men. The kind of mouth that smiles for the camera but not anywhere else. A neck that says he goes to the gym often and a posture that says he does it so that he can stand in a doorway and make it small.
I turn the page.
ER admission, Millbrook Memorial. Chief complaint: fall down stairs. Wrist fracture, distal radius, left. Treated and discharged. No police report.
ER admission, Millbrook Memorial. Chief complaint: "accidental contact with door frame." Orbital bruising, left side. Treated and discharged. No police report.
Pharmacy record. Prescription, fluoxetine 20mg, prescribing physician Dr. Aisha Mehta, filled once, not refilled.
Dr. Aisha Mehta.
The woman who hired her at the clinic is the woman who wrote her an antidepressant prescription eighteen months ago and then got her out.
Dr. Mehta is not a coincidence.
I make a second note in the margin. Protect her. Whatever she needs. I'll make a donation to whatever clinic charity she runs under a name she won't be able to trace. Dr. Mehta is on my list now. Dr. Mehta stays safe.
I turn the page.
Current residence: 847 Lincoln Ave, Unit 4C. Lease, twelve months, $1,150/month. Deposit posted from personal checking, account balance at signing $2,847.
Two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven dollars. That's what she had in the world when she drove away from Jason Michael Harrow.
I close the folder.
I sit back in the chair and I look at the ceiling. Every night for ten nights I’ve thought about her hands. The way she pressed the pad into my bicep with exactly the pressure it needed and not one ounce more. The way she wrote numbers on my wrist with diligence and care.
I think about the moment I held her by the jaw.
She didn't flinch. Sadie Elizabeth Jenkins, five-foot-four, ninety pounds of kindness and courage, looked at me with my blood on her hands and my fingers on her throat and told me her name in the voice you use with a frightened child. She was the calmest thing in that wreckage.
I want to know more.
I want to know everything about her.
I pick up my phone. Dmitri answers on the first ring.
"The elevator," I say.
"Done. Certified. The super's been paid for the next six months to keep an eye on things."
"Cameras?"
"Two in the lobby. One on her floor. Feed to my phone and yours."
"Groceries."
"Delivered today, like you asked. She took the bag inside and hasn’t left her apartment since."
It was her first shift at her new job today. "The clinic?" I ask.
"She's walking it. Fourteen blocks each way. Routes consistent. Leaves at seven-fifteen, home by six-forty."
She walked there and back. It’s a reasonable expectation that she would be tired after a ten-hour shift.
I close the folder on my desk and slide it into the drawer before standing up and walking to the window. I look out at the east lawn, and think about a blond woman fourteen miles from here.
I think about the blueberries.
I close my eyes.
"Dmitri, get me an appointment in that clinic tomorrow. A real one. Something Dr. Mehta wouldn't turn away, but could be handled by an MA."
Dmitri is very quiet while he considers what I’ve just said and whether he’s allowed to say what he’s thinking. He's been with me long enough to know the answer is almost always no.
"I'll set it up," he says with a tightness that tells me he doesn’t like where this is going.
I hang up.