Chương 3
They were trying to keep me from becoming the center of something that had happened to Lily.
Ruiz asked whether Lily was medically stable, whether Rachel lived in our home, and whether there were any other children there.
“No,” I said.
He looked at Lily.
“Is it okay if I talk to your mom for a minute?”
Lily nodded without lifting her head from my shoulder.
Ruiz moved several feet away and asked me for Rachel’s full name and date of birth.
I answered automatically.
Giving him those details felt obscene.
Rachel’s birthday had been the password to our streaming account for three years.
Now I was spelling her middle name for a police report.
“Has there been any violence between you and your wife?”
“No.”
“Any threats?”
“No.”
“Any previous concerns involving Lily?”
My mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Denise watched me carefully.
“Not that I understood as concerns,” I finally said.
Ruiz waited.
That was worse than if he had challenged me.
I rubbed my thumb over the seam of my jeans.
“Rachel is stricter than I am.”
The sentence sounded pathetic the moment I heard it.
“How?”
“She likes rules.”
“What kind of rules?”
“Homework before screens, shoes in the mudroom, things like that.”
I looked toward Lily.
“She doesn’t like back talk.”
Ruiz wrote something down.
I hated his notebook immediately.
Every ordinary compromise I had made as a parent suddenly seemed capable of becoming evidence.
“She’s never hit Lily in front of me.”
“In front of you?”
I looked at him.
“I mean she’s never hit her.”
“Okay.”
His tone stayed flat.
“Has Lily ever told you Rachel hit her?”
“No.”
“Has she ever said she was afraid of Rachel?”
“No.”
Lily shifted against me.
I felt the answer change before she spoke.
“Sometimes.”
Ruiz stopped writing.
I closed my eyes for one second.
“When?” I asked.
Lily pulled away enough to see my face.
“When you worked late.”
The shame was immediate and childish.
I wanted to defend myself.
I wanted to tell her that working late paid for the mortgage and her braces consult and the summer camp she begged to attend.
I wanted the universe to acknowledge that I had been doing something responsible.
None of that belonged in the room.
“What happened when I worked late?”
She looked toward Denise.
“Rachel got mad faster.”
Ruiz crouched near the end of the bed.
“Can you tell me what that means?”
Lily picked at the hospital identification band on her wrist.
“If I forgot stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Chores.”
“What happened?”
“She made me redo them.”
“That sounds annoying.”
Lily looked surprised.
Ruiz shrugged.
“I hated chores when I was eight.”
A tiny breath came out of her that might have been a laugh.
Then she said, “Sometimes she dumped things back out.”
“What things?”
“My dresser.”
I pictured Rachel folding Lily’s clothes while complaining that every T-shirt in the world had somehow become too short and too wide at the same time.
I had watched her organize that dresser.
I had thanked her for it.
“If my room wasn’t good enough, she pulled the drawers out and dumped them.”
“All of them?”
“Sometimes.”
“And then?”
“I had to fix it.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Anything else?”
Lily looked at me.
Her eyes moved away almost immediately.
My chest tightened.
“You can tell him.”
“I know.”
The distinction hurt.
She knew she was allowed.
She still did not know whether it was safe.
Ruiz stood.
“I don’t need everything tonight.”
Denise nodded as if that mattered.
“We want to avoid making her repeat details unnecessarily.”
That sentence introduced a new terror.
There would be other people.
Other questions.
There would be a tomorrow attached to this.
I had been surviving minute by minute because minutes were small.
Tomorrow was enormous.
A security guard knocked and opened the door just enough to speak to Ruiz.
“Your wife is asking whether she’s being detained.”
“She isn’t,” Ruiz said.
The guard hesitated.
“She says she’s not leaving without talking to her spouse.”
Ruiz looked at me.
“You want to speak to her?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Then I corrected myself.
“I don’t know.”
Lily’s shoulders rose.
I saw it.
“No.”
This time I meant it.
“Not while Lily is here.”
Ruiz stepped into the hall.
Through the narrow opening, Rachel’s voice became clear.
“I have rights.”
“You do,” Ruiz said.
“Then tell me what’s happening.”
“I can talk to you over here.”
“No, I want my wife.”
Lily turned her face toward the wall.
I crossed the room and pulled the door shut.
The hospital room became strangely quiet afterward.
A television mounted near the ceiling was showing a cooking competition with captions on.
Someone was trying to make caramel.
Their caramel was apparently a disaster.
Lily watched the silent panic on the contestant’s face for a while.
“Is that lady going to lose?”
“I think so.”
“She burned it.”
“Looks like it.”
“She should start over.”
There was no time to start over.
I kept that thought to myself.
Denise sat beside the sink and opened her folder.
She explained that the hospital was required to report suspected child abuse.
I knew this in the abstract.
Hearing it applied to my family made my body feel cold.
“A report to child protective services?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“What happens?”
“It depends on their assessment.”
That answer made me angry because it contained no handhold.
“Depends on what?”
“Safety, available caregivers, what Lily reports, what law enforcement observes, whether there are concerns about returning to the home.”
“She’s not returning to the home if Rachel is there.”
Denise nodded.
“That matters.”
“It should matter more than anything.”
My voice was sharper than I intended.
Denise did not react.
“I understand why you feel that way.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
I pressed two fingers against my forehead.
“I know you’re doing your job.”
“I am.”
May you like
She closed the folder.
“And part of my job is not promising outcomes I don’t control.”
