Chương 2
The front door was locked, and nobody answered repeated announcements from police.
I could see officers moving along the side of the house while another spoke into his radio near Jason's SUV.
The SUV bothered me.
If Jason was gone, why was his vehicle there?
If Sarah was gone, where was hers?
I suddenly looked toward the street.
"Her car."
Martinez turned back.
"What?"
"Sarah drives a white Accord."
"Is it usually parked here?"
"Usually."
It wasn't.
Martinez wrote something down.
"Plate?"
I gave him what I remembered, then corrected the last two characters after checking an old insurance photograph on my phone.
My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it.
Emily noticed.
"Are you scared?"
I sat beside her again.
"Yeah."
She seemed surprised.
Adults had apparently been pretending around her for too long.
"Me too," she said.
"I know."
"Is Mom dead?"
There are questions a parent imagines being prepared for.
That was not one of mine.
"I don't know where Mom is."
"But the bags."
I forced myself not to look toward the backyard.
"Do you know what's in them?"
Emily shook her head.
"Jason said I did."
"What does that mean?"
"He kept asking what I saw."
The paramedic and Officer Martinez exchanged a glance.
"What did you see, Emily?" Martinez asked gently.
She pressed herself against me.
I felt her breathing change.
"Mom had boxes."
"What kind of boxes?"
"I don't know."
"That's okay."
"She put papers in them."
Martinez lowered himself so he wasn't towering over her.
"Where were the boxes?"
"In the garage."
"What happened after that?"
Emily rubbed the blanket between her fingers.
"Jason came home."
She stopped.
Nobody pushed her.
Across the street, three neighbors had gathered on a porch.
One held a phone chest-high until another officer told him to put it away.
Emily noticed them too and pulled the blanket over her knees.
"They fought in the kitchen," she said.
"Mom said she was done."
My stomach tightened.
Sarah had said those exact words to me once.
Not during our divorce, but two years before it, after I missed dinner with her parents because of another service call.
She had stood at the sink scraping untouched food into the garbage and said, "I'm done begging you to notice when something matters."
I had noticed then.
I simply hadn't changed enough.
"What happened next?" Martinez asked.
"Jason saw me."
Emily swallowed.
"He said I was spying."
"Then what?"
"Mom told me to go upstairs."
Her eyes moved toward the house.
"I heard something break."
The front door suddenly opened.
Two officers entered with weapons drawn.
I covered Emily's view without thinking.
She pushed my hand away.
"I'm not a baby."
"No."
"You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Trying to make me not see things after I already saw them."
I had no answer.
A few minutes later, an officer came outside and spoke quietly to Martinez.
I caught only three words.
"No one inside."
Relief and dread arrived together.
Sarah wasn't lying injured in the house.
Sarah also wasn't there to explain where she had gone.
The pool remained untouched until investigators arrived.
I kept expecting somebody to drag the bags out immediately, because television had apparently trained some stupid part of my brain to believe evidence revealed itself on schedule.
Instead, there were photographs, conversations, taped boundaries, gloves, notes, and waiting.
Waiting was unbearable.
The paramedics wanted Emily taken to the hospital because of dehydration and because nobody yet knew the full extent of what had happened to her.
She refused to leave without me.
I climbed into the ambulance beside her.
As the doors were about to close, Mrs. Harris hurried over.
She had removed her gardening gloves.
"I have something," she said.
An officer tried to stop her from approaching.
"It's for him."
She held out a small padded envelope.
My name was written across the front in Sarah's handwriting.
I stared at it without taking it.
"Where did you get that?"
"Sarah gave it to me Wednesday morning."
Wednesday was the last day Emily had called me.
Mrs. Harris looked embarrassed, then frightened.
"She told me not to give it to you unless something happened."
"Something happened."
"I know."
"Why didn't you call me?"
Her face tightened.
"Because she made me promise."
I almost shouted at her.
I could feel the words coming, hot and useless.
Then I looked at Emily.
She was watching both of us.
Mrs. Harris lowered her voice.
"Sarah said if Jason knew she'd talked to you, he'd take Emily somewhere you couldn't find her."
The anger drained out of me so quickly it left me weak.
Officer Martinez took the envelope before I could.
"Don't open this yet."
"It's addressed to me."
"And it may be evidence."
I laughed once, without humor.
"Everything is evidence now."
He didn't disagree.
The ambulance doors closed.
Emily leaned against my arm as we pulled away.
For several blocks neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered, "Mom told me you'd come."
I looked down at her.
"When?"
"The first night."
She rubbed her thumb over a dirty mark on her wrist.
"She said you might be late, but you'd come."
That hurt more than if Sarah had cursed my name.
At the hospital, a nurse brought Emily apple juice, crackers, and a pair of clean socks because hers were damp and filthy.
Emily ate half a cracker and asked whether she could save the rest.
"You can have as many as you want," the nurse said.
Emily folded the opened packet anyway and put it beside her.
I turned my face toward the window.
A social worker arrived.
Then another officer.
Then a pediatric physician who spoke to Emily first about school, dogs, and whether she preferred grape or cherry popsicles.
The questions about the enclosure came later.
I was asked to step outside for part of the examination.
Emily panicked.
"I want Dad."
The doctor crouched beside her.
May you like
"He'll be right outside."
"No."
