Chương 4
Leah’s face changed.
“What happened to your wrist?”
Emily looked at the floor.
Leah took one step forward. Haron did not move, but his hand returned to Emily’s shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said.
Leah’s gaze flashed. “She’s my daughter.”
“I know.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
Torres entered the space between them before either could make the next mistake.
“Mrs. Vale, I need to speak with you privately.”
Leah looked toward the interview room where Richard had been taken. “Is he all right?”
Haron heard Emily inhale.
Leah heard it too.
The question remained in the hallway after everything else moved around it.
Leah closed her eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
“Go,” Haron said.
“Haron.”
“Go answer their questions.”
Torres led her away.
Emily sat in the metal chair and pulled Haron’s jacket around herself. She tucked both hands inside the sleeves until they disappeared.
“She asked if he was all right,” she said.
Haron crouched in front of her. “People say the wrong thing when they’re scared.”
“You say the wrong thing when you’re mad.”
“Yes.”
“She says it when she’s scared?”
“Sometimes.”
Emily considered the distinction. “That seems worse.”
He could not argue.
At dawn, a child-protection supervisor approved a temporary safety plan placing Emily with Haron for seventy-two hours, subject to home verification and further review. Leah signed the plan after forty minutes of questions and one closed-door argument that could be heard through the glass but not understood.
Richard was placed under arrest shortly after six.
The sight did not bring Haron satisfaction. Richard emerged from the interview room without the overcoat. His tie had been removed. His hands were cuffed in front of him, loosely enough that the metal did not mark his wrists. He did not look at Emily. He looked at Leah.
She stood near the lobby doors, hugging herself.
“Tell them about the basement,” he said.
Torres touched his elbow. “Keep moving.”
“Leah, tell them where you were.”
She said nothing.
Richard’s calm failed then, not loudly but completely. His face folded around disbelief.
“I called you,” he said.
Leah stared at the mismatched shoes on her feet.
The doors shut behind him.
Haron drove Emily to his apartment as the sky turned the color of dishwater. She sat in the passenger seat with both hands in her lap. The red mark had deepened to purple at one edge.
He wanted to ask what Richard meant about the basement. He wanted to know about the scissors, the blood, the recording, every second before the call from the station.
Instead he asked, “Do you still hate the cinnamon air freshener?”
“Yes.”
“I forgot it was there.”
“It smells like a candle pretending to be food.”
He glanced at her.
Her mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile.
At the next gas station, he pulled over, removed the cardboard tree from the rearview mirror, and threw it away. Emily watched through the window as it landed beside an overflowing trash can.
“You could have just put it in the glove box,” she said.
“I wanted it dead.”
That time she smiled.
It lasted less than a second.
Haron’s apartment was above a closed pharmacy and across from a laundromat that ran all night. He had moved there after the divorce because the rent was cheap and the landlord did not mind if he stored tools in the back stairwell. There were two bedrooms, technically. One held Haron’s bed. The other held a folding exercise bike, three paint buckets, boxes of tax receipts, and a narrow mattress Emily used on alternate weekends.
He stood in the doorway of that room and saw it through her eyes.
“Give me ten minutes,” he said.
She put his jacket over the kitchen chair. “I’m tired.”
“You can take my room.”
“I always sleep in here.”
“Not with all this.”
“It was like this last month.”
“I was organizing.”
“You said that last month.”
He carried the paint buckets into the hallway. The exercise bike collapsed badly and pinched his thumb. He swore, apologized, then swore again when the metal hinge caught his sleeve.
Emily sat on the mattress and watched him.
“You don’t have to fix it right now,” she said.
“I do.”
“Why?”
He looked at the boxes, the dust line, the extra blankets piled on a plastic storage bin.
Because she had arrived at his home with a bruise around her wrist, and he could not change what had happened. Because he had spent years accusing Leah of not making enough room for Emily’s needs while keeping his own daughter in a room that looked temporary. Because practical labor had always been the safest place for his fear.
“Because there’s a paint bucket where your shoes go,” he said.
She took off her shoes and placed them beside the paint bucket.
“Not anymore.”
He sat on the floor and laughed once. It sounded wrong in the quiet apartment, but Emily did not flinch.
She lay down fully dressed. Haron found a clean sheet in the dryer and covered her with it. He left the door open.
From the kitchen, he called his supervisor.
Dale answered on the fourth ring. “Somebody better be bleeding.”
Haron looked toward the bedroom.
“I can’t come in.”
“You were supposed to finish the courthouse drywall before inspection.”
“I know.”
“You know because we discussed it yesterday.”
“My daughter had an emergency.”
Dale’s voice changed, though not enough. “Hospital?”
“Police station.”
A pause.
“What happened?”
“I can’t explain it right now.”
“You’re already on a warning for attendance.”
“I know.”
“I have six guys with children, Haron.”
“This isn’t a dentist appointment.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It sounded like it.”
Dale exhaled into the phone. “Call me by noon.”
“I may not know anything by noon.”
May you like
“Then call me and tell me you don’t know anything.”
Haron ended the call and stood at the kitchen counter, staring at a bowl containing two soft apples and a screw he had removed from the refrigerator handle three days earlier.
