Chương 4
That silenced me.
Lily had started peeling the paper backing off a bandage wrapper.
She rolled it into a tiny tube between her fingers.
“Can we go to Grandma’s?”
My mother lived ninety miles away in a condo where the guest room was mostly occupied by quilting supplies and a stationary bike she never used.
“Yes,” I said.
Denise asked, “Does Rachel have access there?”
“She knows where my mother lives.”
“Does she have a key?”
I hesitated.
“I don’t think so.”
My mother had given me a spare key years ago.
I had no idea whether Rachel had ever copied it.
That was the first practical thing that frightened me.
Not because I expected Rachel to break into my mother’s home.
Because I no longer trusted my expectations.
“Could your mother meet you somewhere else tonight?”
“Yes.”
I pulled out my phone.
There were eleven unread messages.
Three from Monica.
Eight from Rachel.
I opened none of them.
I called my mother.
She answered on the fourth ring sounding irritated and half asleep.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Mom.”
Silence.
Her voice changed.
“What happened?”
I looked at Lily.
“I need you to come get us.”
Another silence, shorter this time.
“Where are you?”
“St. Anne’s.”
“What happened?”
“Lily’s hurt.”
My mother inhaled sharply.
“How hurt?”
“She’s okay.”
I hated myself for using the word.
“She has stitches.”
“What happened?”
I looked at Denise.
She gave the smallest shake of her head, not forbidding me, only reminding me that Lily’s story belonged to Lily.
“There was an incident at home.”
“With Rachel?”
My mother had never liked Rachel.
That fact suddenly became inconvenient.
“Yes.”
“I knew it.”
Anger shot through me.
“No, you didn’t.”
Lily looked up.
I lowered my voice.
“You did not know this.”
My mother went quiet.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t make this about being right.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
I could hear her moving around, opening a drawer.
“I’m putting pants on.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
It was one broken sound.
My mother said, “Well, I’m not driving ninety miles in a nightgown.”
Lily smiled.
I handed her the phone.
“Grandma wants to talk to you.”
My mother’s voice softened so completely it almost made me cry.
“Hey, bug.”
“Hi.”
“You causing trouble at the hospital?”
Lily glanced at me.
“A little.”
“Good.”
My mother had always believed humor was a crowbar.
Sometimes she used it when a door should have remained closed.
Tonight it helped.
While they talked, I opened Rachel’s messages.
The first three were angry.
The next two were apologetic.
Then angry again.
You are letting strangers poison her against me.
I was disciplining her.
I should not have used the hose.
I know that.
But she slipped.
I did not push her.
Please stop treating me like some monster.
The seventh message made my breath catch.
Ask her what she did before you decide I’m the villain.
I read it twice.
The eighth had arrived four minutes later.
That came out wrong.
I’m not saying she deserved to get hurt.
I’m saying there is context.
I took screenshots, though I did not know whether screenshots mattered.
Then I stared at the phone.
The woman who had sent those messages had slept beside me last night with one foot tucked under my calf because her feet were always cold.
The woman who had sent those messages had driven twelve miles at eleven in the evening last winter because Lily suddenly remembered she needed poster board for school.
Both things were true.
I wished one could erase the other.
It could not.
Ruiz returned twenty minutes later.
Rachel was gone.
“Did she leave?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“She said she was going home.”
The word home felt contaminated.
Ruiz pulled a chair toward me.
“She gave a statement.”
Lily was still talking softly to my mother, so I stepped closer to him.
“What did she say?”
“That Lily had been told not to dig around the flower bed because chemicals had recently been used there.”
I frowned.
“What chemicals?”
“She said fertilizer.”
“We haven’t fertilized anything.”
Ruiz watched my face.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Could she have done it without you knowing?”
“Maybe.”
I hated the uncertainty in my own answer.
Rachel handled most of the yard.
That had been one of the thousand invisible divisions of labor that made our household function.
Ruiz continued.
“She says Lily ignored her, tracked mud onto the patio, refused to rinse her legs, and ran when Rachel turned the hose toward her.”
“That’s not what Lily said.”
“I understand.”
“She kept spraying her.”
“That’s what Lily reported.”
“And Rachel?”
“Says she stopped when Lily fell.”
My jaw tightened.
“She was spraying her when I got there.”
Ruiz’s pen stopped.
“You personally saw that?”
“Yes.”
I had assumed I had already said it.
Maybe I had told Denise.
Maybe the doctor.
The day had become a pile of conversations with no edges.
“What exactly did you see?”
“Lily was sitting by the patio chair.”
I forced myself to slow down.
“Gauze over her eye.”
“Rachel had the hose.”
“Water was hitting Lily’s shoulder and chest.”
“Was Lily trying to move away?”
“No.”
I saw it again.
Her small body folded inward.
“She was just sitting there.”
“Did Rachel see you arrive?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She said Lily got dirty after she fell.”
Ruiz wrote for several seconds.
Then he asked, “And did she turn off the water?”
I looked at him.
“No.”
The answer changed the room.
“I did.”
Ruiz did not say anything.
He just wrote it down.
Across the room, Lily laughed at something my mother said.
The sound was so normal that for one second I could smell pancakes and laundry detergent and Saturday morning.
Then Ruiz asked me whether we had exterior cameras at the house.
I turned toward him.
“We have a doorbell camera.”
“Backyard?”
“No.”
“Neighbors?”
The question stopped me.
May you like
Our rear fence faced the Millers’ side yard.
Mr. Miller had installed cameras after someone stole tools from his shed the previous summer.
