Mr. Hops
## Chapter 3:
Ray picked up on the fourth ring.
"Elena." Not a question. Like he'd been expecting it, the way old cops expect things. "It's been a while."
"I need to talk to you about the fire."
Silence. Then the sound of a chair creaking. "Okay."
They met at a Panera Bread near Carytown. Ray looked older. Thinner. He wore a flannel shirt that was too big in the shoulders and he ordered a black coffee and didn't touch it. Elena told him everything. The birthmark. The missing records. The LLC.
Ray listened without interrupting. When she finished, he rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the table.
"The case was closed in nine weeks," he said. "That always bothered me."
"Nine weeks for a fire that killed a child?"
"The hospital pushed hard. Their insurance company pushed harder. The fire marshal's report said electrical. Everyone agreed. Everyone wanted it done." He turned his coffee cup in a circle. "I wrote up three requests for additional forensic review. All three got denied by my captain."
"Who asked him to deny them?"
Ray looked at her. "I never found out."
Elena pulled up the LLC filing on her phone. Showed him Gloria's name. Ray put on reading glasses, squinted at the screen, took them off again.
"Your ex-mother-in-law," he said.
"She's bankrolling the woman who might be raising my daughter."
"Elena." He said it carefully. The way you talk to someone standing near a ledge. "I need to ask. Is there any chance this is grief? I've seen it before. Parents who lost kids, they see them everywhere. A face in a crowd. A laugh that sounds right. It's not weakness. It's love looking for somewhere to land."
"I'm a diagnostician, Ray. I've spent twenty-three years reading symptoms. I know what confirmation bias looks like." She pulled up the photo of Lily. Put it next to the intake form from Sophie's appointment. "Tell me I'm wrong."
He looked. For a long time.
"I can't tell you that," he said.
They agreed: Elena would get closer to Sophie. A follow-up appointment. Standard pediatric practice for ear infections. Nothing unusual. And Ray would pull the fire marshal's original notes, not the final report, but the raw notes. The ones that existed before everyone decided to agree.
The follow-up appointment was Thursday.
Sophie came in wearing a yellow raincoat even though it wasn't raining. "I like the way it sounds when I walk," she explained. Swish swish swish. She climbed onto the exam table and kicked her legs.
"How's the ear?" Elena asked.
"Better. Mom says I can go swimming Saturday if it doesn't hurt anymore. Can I go swimming, Dr. Voss?"
"Let me take a look."
The infection was clearing up. Elena checked both ears, throat, reflexes. Standard stuff. She was stalling and she knew it.
"Sophie, do you like to draw?"
"I love drawing. I draw everything. I drew my cat but he looked like a potato so I started over."
"What's your cat's name?"
"We don't have a cat. I drew a pretend cat. His name is Beans."
Elena laughed. Real laughter. It surprised her.
Nora was in the waiting room this time, not the doorway. Elena could see her through the window, scrolling her phone. The scar on her right hand was visible, pink and raised, running from her knuckles to her wrist.
"Sophie, I want to play a quick game. Can you touch your toes for me? Then reach up high as you can?"
Sophie did it. Giggling. While she reached up, her raincoat rode up and her shirt pulled to the side, and Elena checked her back, her shoulders, her arms. No bruises. No marks. The child was healthy and cared for and happy. Whatever else was true, that was true.
"Okay, superstar. You're all good. The ear is healing great."
"Yes!" Sophie pumped her fist. Then she paused. Looked at Elena with that tilted-head expression kids use when they're about to say something they've been holding.
"Dr. Voss?"
"Yeah?"
"You have the same eyes as me."
Elena's chest tightened. "You think so?"
"Mm-hm. Brown with the little gold parts. My mom's eyes are blue. She says I got my eyes from my dad but I don't have a dad so I don't know where they came from."
Elena managed to smile. "Well, brown eyes with gold parts are the best kind. We're in a special club."
"Can it be a secret club?"
"Absolutely."
Sophie grinned. Hopped off the table. At the door she turned back. "Oh! I forgot. Do you want to see my favorite thing?" She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a stuffed rabbit. Gray. Worn soft. One ear flopped longer than the other.
Elena stopped breathing.
"His name is Mr. Hops," Sophie said. "Mom says I've had him since I was a baby."
Mr. Hops. Elena had bought him at a Target in Glen Allen the day after Lily was born. She remembered the aisle. She remembered the fluorescent lights and the squeaky wheel on the cart and the way Marcus had said, "She doesn't need another stuffed animal, Elena," and Elena had bought it anyway because the ears were uneven and that felt right somehow. Imperfect. Like real things.
"He's great," Elena whispered.
"He sleeps with me every night. His long ear is for holding." Sophie demonstrated, wrapping the longer ear around her finger. Then she stuffed him back in the backpack and skipped out to the waiting room.
Elena closed the door. Sat on the stool. Folded a napkin into a triangle so small it couldn't fold anymore.
Her phone buzzed. Ray.
Got the fire marshal's raw notes. There was a second exit from the nursery wing — a service corridor on the east side. It's not in the final report. Someone removed it.
Elena typed back: Who had access to edit the report?
Three dots. Then:
Hospital board members. Your ex-husband was appointed to the board two months before the fire.
Elena set the phone down. Picked up the napkin. Unfolded it. Folded it again.
Sophie's voice carried from the hallway, chattering to Nora about swimming and Beans the imaginary cat.
"Mommy says I came from far away," she'd said during the exam, unprompted, while Elena checked her throat. "Like a bird."
May you like
Like a bird.
Keep reading Part 4 — because when Elena calls her ex-husband about the fire report, his response is not the reaction of a man with nothing to hide.
