Chương 2
“No.”
“Chloe, I need you to tell Grandma that you were sick.”
Her fingers dug into my shoulder.
“Stop talking to her.”
“Mom, you are making this worse.”
“For whom?”
The distant sound of sirens reached us.
Julian went quiet again.
Then his footsteps moved away.
I expected him to run.
Instead, I heard him sit down.
The staircase creaked under his weight.
When he spoke, his voice no longer sounded like the man from the office.
It sounded like the thirteen-year-old boy who had once called me from a police station after climbing through the window of an abandoned factory because his friends dared him.
“I screwed up.”
I closed my eyes.
There were words a mother spent her life fearing.
Those were among them.
“What did you give her?”
“I didn’t give her anything.”
“Chloe says you did.”
“No, she said something about medicine, didn’t she?”
I had not told him that.
My hand tightened around the telephone receiver.
Julian seemed to hear his own mistake.
“Victoria told me.”
“Victoria is gone.”
“Mom.”
“What was in the blue medicine?”
He did not answer.
The sirens grew louder.
A dog started barking at the house next door.
Somewhere in the kitchen, the refrigerator dropped a handful of ice into its tray with a ridiculous clatter.
I had stood in that kitchen three hours earlier arranging sandwiches for mourners.
I had cut the crusts off two because Chloe used to refuse crusts, then caught myself and thrown those pieces into the garbage.
Now she was alive in my arms.
The front of the house filled with flashing red and blue light.
Someone pounded on the front door and announced the police.
Julian remained on the stairs.
“Mom, please.”
I heard something in his voice that I had not heard before.
Not fear of losing Chloe.
Fear of what Chloe might say.
I unlocked the laundry-room door.
The moment it opened, Julian stood.
He looked terrible.
His white dress shirt was untucked, and there was a dark smear along one cuff.
For a second, neither of us moved.
His eyes went directly to Chloe.
She recoiled so violently that I nearly lost my grip on her.
That was enough.
I stepped backward and slammed the door.
Julian caught it with his hand.
“Mom!”
I threw my weight against it.
He pushed from the other side.
“Stop!”
“Let me see her.”
“No.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“Then why is she afraid of you?”
The pressure against the door vanished.
Police voices sounded from the foyer.
Julian backed away.
I opened the door just as two officers entered the hallway.
Everything became noisy and confused after that.
One officer ordered Julian to show his hands.
Another tried to ask me what had happened while I kept saying Chloe needed an ambulance, not questions.
Julian attempted to explain that there had been a medical emergency.
I shouted over him.
Chloe began coughing.
That finally ended the argument.
The paramedics came through the front door carrying equipment, and one of them took a single look at Chloe before kneeling beside us.
“What’s her name?”
“Chloe.”
“How old?”
“Six.”
“Do we know what she ingested?”
“No.”
“Yes,” Julian said behind me.
Every person in the hallway turned toward him.
Julian’s face changed.
He looked at Chloe, then at the officer holding him back.
“It was prescribed.”
“What was it?” the paramedic asked.
Julian swallowed.
“I don’t know the name.”
“You just said it was prescribed.”
“It was Victoria’s.”
The paramedic’s expression hardened.
“For what?”
Julian rubbed both hands over his face.
“I don’t know.”
I had never wanted to strike my son before.
The desire was so sudden and physical that I frightened myself.
Instead, I carried Chloe toward the stretcher.
Her hand slipped from around my neck.
Something fell from inside the shawl and clicked against the hardwood.
It was a small plastic cap.
Blue.
The paramedic picked it up with a gloved hand.
Julian stared at it.
He stopped talking.
The officer beside him noticed.
“So you recognize that?”
“No.”
“You reacted to it.”
“I’m watching my daughter being taken to a hospital.”
The paramedics placed Chloe on the stretcher and fitted an oxygen mask over her face.
She reached toward me.
I caught her fingers.
One paramedic told me I could ride with them.
Behind us, an officer asked Julian where his wife had gone.
“I don’t know.”
“What vehicle is she driving?”
“I don’t know.”
“You live here, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know what vehicle your wife drives?”
Julian looked at me.
There was a plea in his face now.
I had spent almost four decades responding to that look.
When he forgot homework, I drove it to school.
When he wrecked his first car, I dealt with the insurance company.
When his first marriage collapsed, I let him sleep in my guest room for six months and never told him that his ex-wife had called me twice just to cry.
When Victoria complained that I interfered too much, I stepped back because Julian asked me to.
I had mistaken rescuing him for loving him so many times that neither of us knew the difference anymore.
The paramedics rolled Chloe toward the door.
I followed.
“Mom,” Julian said.
I stopped.
He looked smaller between the two officers.
“Tell them I wouldn’t hurt her.”
I looked at Chloe on the stretcher.
She had heard him.
Even behind the oxygen mask, I saw her mouth move.
I bent close.
“What, sweetheart?”
Her eyes opened.
“Grandma,” she whispered, “Daddy put Mommy’s medicine in my juice.”
One of the paramedics heard her too.
So did the officer nearest Julian.
My son closed his eyes.
I did not tell anyone he would never hurt her.
I walked out with Chloe instead.
May you like
The ambulance doors closed before Julian could say my name again.
I climbed onto the narrow bench beside Chloe’s stretcher and held her hand while the paramedic cut away one sleeve of her black funeral dress.
