THE PLATE ON THE FLOOR

Chapter 3 —  The Man Who Called 911

CHAPTER 3 — The Man Who Called 911

I stayed in the hallway longer than I should have.

My name is Nina Reyes, and I was thirty-four years old that fall, working as a home health aide for an elderly woman on the fourth floor of that building on Staten Island.

Mrs. Karpov's apartment was the last door on the left, and the family in 4C had only lived there for six weeks.

I had never spoken to any of them.

I told myself I was just adjusting my bag, checking my phone, doing nothing at all.

But I had seen the girl.

I had seen the white rice on her plate, and I had seen the table with the roasted chicken and the green beans and the mashed potatoes that the woman and the boy were eating without looking at her.

And I had heard her say it, clear as a bell, in a voice too loud for a child her size.

"Everyday, everyday, and won't let me eat at the table!"

Then the man in the suit had walked through the doorway toward the camera, which was me, which was the hallway, and he had said the four words that made my skin go cold.

"Keep your mouth shut."

I should have knocked.

I should have said something.

Instead I flattened myself against the wall beside 4C's door and listened, because I am not brave, I am just nosy, and nosy people hear things.

What I heard was the man on the phone.

His voice had changed completely.

It was calm now, professional, almost polite.

"911?" he said.

"Yes.

I need to report a crime."

I remember thinking, Thank God, he's calling about the girl.

But then he kept talking, and my thankfulness curdled.

"A burglary," he said.

"Someone broke into my home.

My wallet is missing from the kitchen counter.

There is a woman and two children here who are very frightened."

A woman and two children.

Not three children.

Not a girl on the floor with a plate of rice.

I heard him walk across the room, and I heard the woman's voice, small and quick, the way a person talks when they are trying to keep someone from getting angry.

"Victor, please, the boy is still eating."

Victor.

Not Dad.

Not even his first name said with love.

I put my hand flat on the wall and I tried to breathe quietly.

Through the thin door I could hear the little girl start to cry, and I could hear the man, this Victor, tell her to be quiet in a voice that was not a father's voice.

And then I heard him say something else, something meant for the woman, but it came through the door loud enough for me.

"If you let her talk to anyone, I'll make a call about your brother."

Your brother.

Not my brother.

I did not know what that meant yet.

I only knew that the woman stopped talking, and the crying stopped, and the whole apartment went silent except for the sound of a fork on a plate.

I waited until I heard him move toward the front door, and then I did the only sensible thing I had done all evening.

I walked to the stairwell and pretended to be on my own phone.

But I was not fast enough.

The door opened, and Victor stepped into the hallway, still holding his phone against his ear, and he looked right at me.

He was tall and wide in the shoulders, maybe forty, with a gold watch that looked brand new.

He smiled at me, and it was a smile that did not reach his eyes.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"I'm here for Mrs. Karpov," I said.

"Apartment 4A."

He looked at my bag, at my scrubs, at my badge.

He nodded slowly.

"Then I'd mind my own business if I were you," he said.

"These are family matters."

I nodded, because I am a coward, and I started walking toward 4A.

And then he called after me, in that same polite voice, the one that made me want to run.

"Tell your brother Danny I said hello."

I stopped walking.

I did not turn around.

My brother Danny had been gone for five years.

No one in my family said his name out loud.

No one.

I heard Victor's door close behind me, and I stood in that hallway with my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my ears, and I understood two things at once.

I understood that the man in 4C was not protecting that little girl.

And I understood that whatever was happening in that apartment, it had something to do with my brother.

I walked into Mrs. Karpov's apartment and I put on my gloves and I took her blood pressure and I smiled at her and I asked about her grandchildren.

And the entire time, I was thinking about the locked pantry I had glimpsed through the open door, and the woman's face, and the child on the floor with her plate of rice.

When my shift ended, I did not go home.

I sat in my car in the building's parking lot and I called the only person I could think of who might know where Danny had gone.

My mother did not answer.

So I drove to her house in Brooklyn, using my key in the back door, because it was late and she was asleep and I did not want to explain myself.

I went straight to the basement.

We kept Danny's things down there in a plastic bin, the way you do when you cannot admit that someone is never coming back.

I opened the bin and I found his old work jacket and his high school yearbook and, at the bottom, in the pocket of a jacket he never wore, a phone.

A phone that had been dead for five years, but which I plugged into the wall anyway, because I am a nurse and I have learned that even dead things sometimes have a heartbeat.

The screen lit up.

I scrolled to the last call in the call log.

It was outgoing, from five years ago.

And the name on the screen was Carla.

I did not know who Carla was.

But I knew now that whoever she was, my brother had called her right before he disappeared.