My heart jumped, and I sat up straight in my bed again.
“Is Linus there?” I asked.
“Thomas Kent runs like a girl,” the man said.
The non sequitur threw me. Then I remembered Parker, Otis’s partner, the guy with Alzheimer’s. I had seen him one night when he was walking in the quad at Forge. He’d paused in front of the dean’s tower to pee on the steps, and Linus had run over to take care of him.
“Is this Parker?” I asked.
“Parker here,” he said. “I’m busy. I’m on the telephone.”
“Hi, Parker. This is Althea. I’m a friend of Rosie Sinclair’s. Is Linus there?”
“I’m on the phone,” Parker said.
A man spoke in the background, and when a new voice came on, I recognized Otis. “Hello? Can I help you?”
I introduced myself as Althea once again. “I’m trying to reach Linus.”
“You want the hotline for Found Missing,” Otis said. “Try this.” He rattled off a number. “Good luck to you.”
“Wait!” I said. “Please don’t hang up. Rosie’s been trying to email Linus at Found Missing, but he doesn’t answer her. She asked me to call him. Does he even see that email?”
“That’s the one. They’ll route you where you need to go.”
“Otis, I really know Rosie. I know about Molly, your dog, and the way Linus used to carry her up the lookout tower for you every day. Don’t hang up on me. I really need a way to reach him.”
His voice came slowly. “You’ve just watched the show.”
I scanned my brain for anything I could have seen that was off camera. “You have a toilet behind a curtain up there in the lookout tower. And a begonia. You have a picture of you and Parker tacked to the beam with the hammock. You’re never on screen yourself, but I know you like to wear a gray hat with a visor.”
I held my breath, listening to the silence of his uncertainty.
“Okay, if you know Rosie, where is she now?” Otis asked. “What’s her phone number?”
A distinct click came from his end, like another line picking up, and then a third voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”
It was Linus. My breath caught and my lungs squeezed tight. I didn’t know how to speak to him now, when my voice wasn’t my own.
“This is Linus Pitts,” he said. “Who’s calling?”
Miles vanished. His words were in my ear again, just like before, with his distinctive Welsh accent. I could picture his gaze deepening with a frown, and the suspicion hovering just behind his polite curiosity.
“I’m Althea,” I said thickly. “A friend of Rosie’s. She asked me to call you.”
Distance hummed between us, and I heard him weighing whether to believe me.
“I’ll take this one, Otis,” Linus said.
“Your funeral,” Otis said. A click sounded as he hung up, and the connection became slightly clearer.
“Is Rosie with you?” Linus asked.
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“Put her on.”
“I can’t. She has trouble with her voice. She asked me to talk to you for her.”
A shifting came from his end of the line. “Okay, so here’s the thing. We get a ton of calls here, and I keep telling the guys to let the machine take them, but Parker has this misguided sense of gallantry that makes him pick up the ruddy phone, and then he gets worked up, and Otis has to step in, and now you’ve worked up Otis, too, and I’m going to have to ask you to please leave us alone and go through the normal channels to reach the show. All clear now?”
“You paid Otis in blood for your rent,” I said quickly. “You did it every six weeks.”
I held my phone tightly, fearing that the next sound would be a disconnection.
“I told her that in confidence,” he said finally.
“I know, and she’s sorry she had to tell me, but she wants you to know she’s really here, listening in.”
“But she won’t talk to me.”
“Right. She can’t. I’m talking for her. Ask me anything. I’ll prove it.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “What does Cyrano have to do with anything?”
My heart thumped, and I paused before answering again, as if I were interpreting something from a companion in the room. “You and Rosie could talk for real at night on the walkie-hams, and touch each other during the day, but you could never do both at the same time. You said it made you think of the Cyrano de Bergerac story, but twisted, as if both guys were combined into one person.” I gave a brief laugh. “Here I am talking for Rosie. It’s sort of another Cyrano thing. Right Rosie?” I paused. “She’s agreeing.”
A moment later, his voice came again, more softly. “Is she writing answers for you? Is that it?”
I could go with that.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then she should just email me.”
“She tried. Many times. You didn’t reply.”
“Maybe because I get dozens of emails every day from people pretending to be her.”
“But I can prove she’s right here. I’m not pretending.”
“Okay. Ask her why she broke up with me. Ask her that.”
His question was ridiculously layered and complicated.
“I don’t know why,” I said softly. “She shouldn’t have. She says she’s sorry.”
His next pause was longer.
“Who is this?” he asked.
For the first time, he sounded like he might believe me. A strangling loneliness lodged in my voice box. “I’m Althea. Rosie’s friend.”
“Althea who? Where’s Rosie?”
“We’re out of the country,” I said.
“Both of you?” The doubt was back in his voice. “Tell me where and I’ll come get you.”
I turned toward the dark window. “You can’t come for us.”
“Then why did you call me? I can get anywhere. I have resources for the show,” he said.
I felt a twinge of caution. “You’d come to shoot a segment for your show?” I asked.
“Althea,” he said. “Why do you think I have the show? The point of it is to locate missing children. I’ve been trying to find Rosie since she disappeared in October.”
He wanted to locate me for his show, not for us. The truth stung. “She’s not interested in being featured on some show,” I said. “She’s had enough of that.”
“Then what do you want? Why’d you call?”
“I just wanted—” I stopped. What had I thought? That we’d be friends again? I wasn’t even in my own body. “Rosie thought you’d want to know she’s alive.”
“Of course I want to know that,” he said. “But you haven’t proven anything. You know some private facts about us, but she could have told them to you weeks ago. You could have forced them out of her.”
I clutched my fingers into a fist. “I haven’t forced anything out of her. I’m her friend,” I said. “Look. I thought when you went down the pit to look for Rosie it meant that you still cared about her. You at least owe it to her to listen to me now.”
“Down the pit. What are you talking about?”
“You know!” I said. “You went down the clock tower pit. You went looking for Rosie that last night at Forge.”
“Put Rosie on,” he said. “Put her on now. Rosie? Are you hearing this? If we’re on speaker, say something.”