Chương 4
“Did I do the right thing?”
Clara looked at the phone still clutched against the girl’s chest.
The answer should have been easy.
It was not.
Doing the right thing had just put police in Olivia’s home and her mother under suspicion of trying to hurt her baby sister.
Clara would not insult her with a lie about everything being fine.
“You told the truth.”
Olivia waited.
Clara swallowed.
“That matters.”
The girl nodded, but she did not look comforted.
Ruiz asked Olivia to give him the phone.
She tightened her grip.
“No.”
“We need to preserve the video.”
“You’ll delete it.”
Ruiz’s face softened slightly.
“I won’t.”
“That’s what she said.”
Vanessa made a wounded noise from near the stairs.
“Olivia.”
The girl stepped closer to Clara.
Ruiz did not reach for the device.
“Okay.”
He took a small card from his pocket and handed it to Marisol instead.
“Keep the phone with her for now.”
His partner looked at him.
Ruiz said, “We’ll document it here.”
Olivia watched them photograph the screen.
Clara watched Vanessa watch Olivia.
There was no maternal anger in Vanessa’s face now.
There was fear.
Not fear of the police.
Fear of what else the child might say.
Clara felt cold despite the warm foyer.
Ruiz approached the security console while his partner remained with Vanessa.
“What was she deleting?” he asked Olivia.
“The stair video.”
“Anything else?”
Olivia’s eyes moved toward her mother.
Vanessa shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Clara saw it.
So did Ruiz.
Olivia whispered, “There were other days.”
Adrian was already outside with Emma and did not hear her.
Clara wished he had.
Ruiz leaned closer.
“What other days?”
Vanessa spoke before Olivia could.
“She is confused.”
Ruiz turned.
“I told you not to interrupt.”
“She’s a child.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t understand what she sees.”
Olivia’s face went red.
“I understand you locked Clara out.”
Clara stared at her.
“What?”
Olivia looked frightened by Clara’s reaction.
“Last week.”
Clara’s mind caught on the words.
“I wasn’t locked out.”
“You said your key stopped working.”
Clara had blamed the electronic lock.
Adrian’s assistant had replaced her access card the next morning.
Vanessa said, “That has nothing to do with this.”
Ruiz asked, “What happened that day?”
Clara rubbed her injured wrist.
“Nothing.”
Olivia looked at her.
“Emma was alone upstairs.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
Only for eleven minutes.
She had stood outside the service entrance calling Marisol while the new card failed again and again.
Vanessa had been home.
At least Clara had believed she was.
“She wasn’t alone,” Clara said.
“Your mother was here.”
Olivia shook her head.
“Mom left.”
The foyer seemed to tilt beneath Clara even though she was sitting down.
“Where?”
“She drove away.”
Vanessa snapped, “Olivia, stop talking.”
The second officer stepped closer to her.
Ruiz asked Clara, “Who was responsible for the baby at that time?”
Clara answered automatically.
“I was.”
“And you couldn’t enter the house?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“My access card stopped working.”
Ruiz looked toward Vanessa.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“I don’t manage staff access.”
Marisol spoke from the hall.
“I do.”
Everyone turned.
She wiped her wet hands against her pants.
“And that card did not fail by itself.”
Vanessa stared at her.
Marisol’s voice became smaller, but she continued.
“Mrs. Mercer asked me to deactivate Clara’s card.”
Clara felt the blood leave her face.
“When?”
“The night before.”
“Why?”
Marisol looked miserable.
“She said you were taking the day off.”
Clara had not taken a day off.
She had spent eleven minutes outside while an infant slept upstairs in a house Clara could not enter.
Vanessa began speaking quickly.
“This is ridiculous.”
Ruiz raised his hand again.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
“No, you’re letting employees build some absurd story because they’re frightened they’ll lose their jobs.”
Marisol’s eyes flashed.
“I have worked here twelve years.”
“And you can be replaced in twelve minutes.”
Silence followed.
Vanessa seemed to hear herself too late.
Ruiz watched her carefully.
Clara looked at Olivia.
The girl’s shoulders had drawn inward.
This was not new to her.
That was the part Clara could not stop seeing.
Not the stroller.
Not the security footage.
Olivia’s practiced stillness.
Dana appeared at the doorway.
“Clara, we need to move.”
Clara nodded.
Ruiz stepped beside the stretcher.
“At the hospital, an officer will speak with you when you’re medically cleared.”
“Okay.”
He lowered his voice.
“Do you have somewhere you can stay tonight?”
Clara almost said she lived here.
Then she remembered that she did not.
She had a small apartment across town, a kitchen window that faced a brick wall, and three houseplants she regularly forgot to water.
“Yes.”
Ruiz nodded.
As the paramedics rolled her toward the entrance, Clara looked back once.
Vanessa stood beneath the enormous staircase in her gold dress, no longer elegant, no longer composed.
Olivia remained beside Marisol with the phone pressed against her ribs.
Officer Ruiz was studying the security console.
And on the television behind them, Vanessa’s hand was still frozen against the stroller handle.
The ambulance doors closed before Clara could see what happened next.
At the hospital, Clara discovered that fear could survive perfectly well under fluorescent lights.
A nurse cut away the torn edge of her stocking, examined the swelling around her ankle, and asked the same three questions twice because Clara kept turning her head toward the pediatric doors.
“Clara Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“Any allergies?”
“No.”
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“No.”
The nurse waited.
Clara realized she had answered the first question twice and not the third.
“No,” she said again.
The nurse gave her a patient look.
“Which one was that for?”
Clara almost smiled.
“The consciousness.”
“Good.”
The nurse wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm.
“Your blood pressure disagrees with the word good.”
Clara looked down at the dried blood on her apron.
May you like
The hospital had offered her a gown, but changing clothes had felt impossible.
The gray uniform was dirty, torn, and ridiculous now, yet it was the last ordinary thing left from that morning.
