Chapter 6 - The Woman in Room 114
Rebecca agreed to meet Erin in a coffee shop beside a busy shopping center in Gahanna.
She was forty-six, with red-brown hair and the tired caution of someone who had spent years monitoring every sentence before speaking.
She did not apologize immediately.
“I’ve been seeing your father for eighteen months.”
Erin’s stomach tightened.
“My mother knew?”
Rebecca looked down at her coffee.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt despite everything Erin had already learned.
Rebecca explained that Frank had promised to leave Linda after Owen’s wedding. Then after tax season. Then after the company renewed its largest commercial contract.
Linda discovered the affair nine months earlier after finding motel charges on a business credit card.
“She came to my apartment,” Rebecca said. “I expected screaming. She asked what Frank had promised me.”
“What did you say?”
“That he was leaving.”
Rebecca gave a humorless smile.
“She told me he’d been saying that to women since before you were born.”
Linda had not exposed Frank. She negotiated.
Frank could continue seeing Rebecca if he kept the marriage intact, protected Linda’s financial security, and stopped using company money for motel rooms. Linda did not forgive him. She treated the affair like a dangerous expense that needed tighter management.
“What do you have?” Erin asked.
Rebecca glanced around the café.
“The motel owner lives in Florida. I handle the front desk three nights a week in exchange for reduced rent. The cameras cover the parking lot and office entrance.”
“Did they record my father that night?”
“They recorded more than that.”
Rebecca said Frank and Linda arrived at the motel the morning after Erin was hospitalized. They demanded access to the camera system.
Frank claimed Erin had been stalking him and might use motel footage to blackmail the family.
Rebecca pretended the system automatically erased everything after midnight.
It did not.
She copied two days of footage onto a flash drive.
“Why didn’t you give it to police?”
“Because Frank controls my paycheck, my health insurance, and the apartment deposit. He said if the video surfaced, he’d tell everyone I attacked you.”
“You knew I was in a coma.”
“I knew you were hurt. I didn’t know how badly until later.”
Erin stood.
Rebecca reached into her purse but did not remove anything.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
“I need protection before I hand it over.”
Erin looked at the woman who had helped break her mother’s marriage and then been trapped inside the same machinery of fear.
“What’s on the footage?”
May you like
Rebecca’s face tightened.
“Your father telling your mother why he hit you.”
