Chương 6
“I’m her mother.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me my husband knows something about what happened to her when she was six.”
“I’m telling you what he reported.”
The distinction mattered.
I hated that it mattered.
Marisol arranged to come to Rachel’s house at eleven with another worker trained in child interviews.
She asked that I not question Emma about the old haircut beforehand.
I promised.
Then I stood in the hallway holding my phone and listened to the house.
A car passed outside.
Somebody’s sprinkler clicked across a lawn.
The world had not noticed that a memory I had stored under unfortunate haircut had just been reopened under possible punishment.
Rachel found me ten minutes later making coffee I did not want.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I mean unusually terrible.”
“That helps.”
She poured cereal into a bowl and ate it standing at the counter.
I told her about the gum incident.
Rachel stopped chewing.
“I remember that haircut.”
“So do I.”
“She looked like she’d done it herself with kitchen scissors.”
“Patricia said she had to cut around the gum.”
Rachel put the spoon down.
“Did you ever see the gum?”
“No.”
“Did Emma?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel stared at me.
I held up a hand.
“I’m not asking her.”
“I didn’t say you should.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say your coffee is overflowing.”
I turned.
Coffee had spread beneath the mug because I had forgotten to put the pot back properly.
Rachel grabbed a dish towel.
I laughed once, without meaning to.
She handed me the towel.
“You always do that when you’re scared.”
“Spill coffee?”
“Try to solve seventeen things with one brain.”
I wiped the counter.
“That’s not a personality trait.”
“It is in this family.”
Emma came downstairs twenty minutes later wearing one of Rachel’s old college T-shirts over her pajama shorts.
She had put the blue cap on crooked.
“Can I have waffles?”
Rachel looked offended.
“You ate pancakes yesterday.”
“That was yesterday.”
“Strong argument.”
I watched Emma open the freezer.
There were frozen waffles behind a bag of peas.
She looked normal enough that guilt hit me with absurd force.
Normal children should not have to be studied for evidence.
I turned away and rinsed my coffee mug.
At eleven sharp, Marisol arrived with a woman named Tessa Reed.
Tessa wore plain clothes and carried a soft-sided bag instead of a briefcase.
She introduced herself to Emma, asked whether she could sit at the dining table with her, and spent several minutes talking about Emma’s school before saying anything about Patricia.
Emma told her she hated multiplication tables and liked library day.
Tessa said she had hated fractions.
Emma said fractions were easy.
“That’s humiliating for me,” Tessa said.
Emma smiled.
Marisol asked Rachel and me to wait in the kitchen where we could not hear the full conversation.
I hated it immediately.
Not because I wanted to control Emma’s answers.
Because every protective instinct in me objected to being thirty feet away when someone asked my child about something that frightened her.
Rachel handed me an apple.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Eat it.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then hold it.”
I held the apple.
After fifteen minutes, I realized my thumbnail had cut a crescent into the skin.
After twenty-five, Tessa came into the kitchen alone.
“Emma asked for you.”
I stood so fast the chair legs scraped.
Tessa led me into the dining room.
Emma was sitting with her knees pulled up beneath Rachel’s oversized shirt.
There was a sheet of paper in front of her covered in circles and stick figures.
I sat beside her.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
Tessa took her seat across from us.
“Emma was telling me about when she was six.”
My throat tightened.
Emma looked at me.
“Grandma lied.”
The words landed quietly.
“What do you mean?”
Tessa lifted one hand.
“Let her tell it how she remembers.”
I nodded.
Emma stared at the paper.
“I didn’t get gum in my hair.”
I said nothing.
“She put it there.”
My hand went still in my lap.
“Grandma?”
Emma nodded.
Tessa asked, “Can you tell your mom what happened before that?”
Emma rubbed one finger along the edge of the paper.
“I was chewing gum.”
“Where?”
“In Grandma’s room.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Watching TV.”
“Were you supposed to have gum?”
Emma shook her head.
“She said no gum upstairs.”
“What happened?”
“She saw me.”
Emma’s face tightened.
“She told me to spit it out.”
“Did you?”
“I swallowed it.”
Tessa did not react.
“What happened next?”
Emma looked at me again.
“Grandma said I was lying.”
I felt my pulse in my throat.
“She said open my mouth.”
Emma demonstrated, opening her mouth slightly.
“Then she got gum from the trash.”
Rachel made a faint sound from the doorway.
I had forgotten she was standing there.
Tessa asked, “How did you know it was gum from the trash?”
“I saw her take it out of the wrapper.”
“Was it the same gum you had?”
“No.”
Emma swallowed.
“It was pink.”
“What color had yours been?”
“Blue.”
Tessa nodded.
“And then?”
Emma put both hands under her thighs.
“She pushed it in my hair.”
No one moved.
“She said if I wanted to act sneaky, I could learn what happened when sneaky girls made messes.”
I could hear Patricia’s voice in the sentence.
Not because Emma imitated her.
Because Patricia loved categories.
Lazy.
Rude.
Ungrateful.
Spoiled.
Sneaky fit perfectly among them.
Tessa asked whether anyone else had been in the room.
“Dad came later.”
The room changed.
I looked at Emma.
She was staring at the paper again.
“How much later?” Tessa asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Before your hair was cut?”
“Yes.”
“What happened when he came in?”
“Grandma showed him.”
“What did your dad say?”
Emma’s eyes filled.
“He said, ‘Jesus, Mom.’”
That sounded like Daniel too.
I could see it.
May you like
The exasperated sigh.
The hand through his hair.
