Chapter 15 - THE FOLDER WITHOUT A NAME
Eighteen months after the basement, I woke one Saturday morning because sunlight was hitting my face.
For several seconds, I panicked.
Ryan used to control the blinds.
Then I remembered where I was.
My apartment.
My windows.
My morning.
I made coffee and sat cross-legged on the couch while Emma video-called from Lisbon. She had finally gone home six months earlier after staying far longer than either of us originally planned.
We talked about ordinary things.
Her impossible landlord.
My promotion.
A man from work who had asked me to dinner and whom I had not yet answered.
Emma raised one eyebrow.
“You like him.”
“That isn’t the problem.”
“I know.”
I appreciated that she didn’t say I should go.
She had learned.
So had I.
Near the end of the call, my phone buzzed.
Detective Chen.
We still spoke occasionally because the investigation had generated cases involving other women and several people who bought material from Ryan.
I answered.
“There’s one thing,” she said.
My stomach tightened automatically.
“What?”
“The archive had a folder we still haven’t matched.”
I knew about it.
R17.
Investigators once assumed the R meant Rachel.
It didn’t.
The timestamps predated me by more than a year.
“We recovered enough metadata to think she may have lived in Indiana,” Chen said. “No confirmed identity.”
“Is she alive?”
“We don’t know.”
There it was.
The sentence that would have destroyed me eighteen months earlier.
Now I could hold it without letting it swallow the whole room.
“What do you need from me?”
“Nothing right now. I promised I’d keep you updated.”
After we hung up, Emma was still watching through the screen.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
She waited.
Then I added, “I hope they find her.”
“So do I.”
For a while neither of us spoke.
My coffee cooled beside me.
Traffic moved twelve floors below.
Somewhere in the building, a child laughed in the hallway.
Life making ordinary noise.
Eventually Emma asked about the man from work again.
I rolled my eyes.
“You’re relentless.”
“I live on another continent. It’s my main hobby.”
I smiled.
Maybe I would go to dinner.
Maybe I wouldn’t.
That question belonged to me now.
Before ending the call, I opened the drawer beside the couch.
The cracked lamp camera was still there.
For years, Ryan had filmed me because he believed recording someone gave him ownership of the story.
He was wrong.
A camera preserves what happened.
It does not get to decide what it means.
Neither does an abuser.
Neither does a courtroom.
Neither does the internet.
I closed the drawer.
Outside, Chicago was bright and cold.
Somewhere, investigators were still trying to put a real name beside R17.
And if that woman was alive, I hoped one day she would learn what I had needed so desperately to learn myself:
May you like
Someone had finally believed the record.
And nobody was waiting for her to scream louder.
