Chapter 5 - Ethan Remembered A Phone Call Everyone Had Forgotten
Emily spent the evening under medical observation.
She had bruising from the catch and a strained shoulder, but Ethan had prevented what could have been catastrophic injury.
Laura was removed from the reception property.
Richard did not defend her.
Not after the shove.
Police documented what happened, and Laura’s attorney began dealing with that immediate case.
But Ethan barely spoke on the drive to the hospital.
Not because he was thinking about Laura.
Because of Emily’s final sentence.
She knows why Mom’s car never took that turn.
That night, sitting beside Emily’s hospital bed, Ethan remembered something.
He had been eighteen when Marianne died.
That evening he had been at a college hockey game with friends in Grand Rapids.
At approximately nine fifteen, his mother called him.
He remembered because the arena was loud and he stepped into a stairwell to answer.
Marianne sounded frightened.
Not panicked.
Confused.
She asked:
“Ethan, are you okay?”
He laughed.
“Yeah. Why?”
She paused.
Then said:
“Never mind. I love you.”
That was their final conversation.
Ethan had told police about the call originally, but nobody attached significance to it.
Why would they?
A mother checking on her son before a fatal accident seemed painfully ordinary.
Now it wasn’t.
Emily sat upright despite her sore shoulder.
“Why would she ask if you were okay?”
Ethan stared at her.
“I don’t know.”
Richard, sitting across the room, suddenly looked ill.
“What time?”
“A little after nine.”
Marianne entered the lake property at 9:31.
Someone had made her believe something was wrong with Ethan.
And whatever she heard was serious enough to make her drive eleven miles away from home in heavy rain.
That realization produced the next question.
May you like
Who told her?
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