Chương 9
I had told myself it was temporary.
The furniture reflected that.
A gray couch.
A rented dining table.
Two lamps.
Almost no pictures.
Lily had complained the first weekend that it looked like a dentist’s office.
She had been right.
I carried her upstairs.
She woke when I opened the door.
“Are we at your house?”
“Our apartment.”
“You always say apartment.”
“Technically accurate.”
“Can I call it home?”
The question stopped me in the entryway.
“Yes.”
She rested her head against my shoulder again.
“Okay.”
I put her in my bed because the second bedroom still had unopened boxes along one wall.
She noticed them.
“Those are from Daddy’s house.”
“Some of them.”
“Did you get all your stuff?”
“No.”
Her face tightened.
“You have to go back?”
“Not tonight.”
“Ever?”
I pulled the blanket over her.
“We’ll figure that out.”
She stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t want to go there.”
“You don’t have to tonight.”
Her lower lip pushed forward.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I sat beside her.
“No.”
She waited.
“I don’t know what happens to the house yet.”
“Daddy lives there.”
“Yes.”
“And Grandma.”
“Sometimes.”
“She’s there a lot.”
I knew that.
Evelyn had started staying over after I moved out because Taylor claimed he needed help with school pickups while my duty schedule stabilized.
At the time, I had considered it irritating but practical.
Now every practical choice had teeth.
“Did Grandma stay there when I was still living there?”
Lily nodded.
“Sometimes when you had night work.”
I looked at her.
“How often?”
She shrugged.
“Lots.”
“Did the closet happen then?”
Her eyes shifted away.
I stopped myself.
“No more questions.”
“I can tell.”
“You can tell me whenever you want.”
“What if it makes you sad?”
“That’s my job.”
“To be sad?”
A laugh escaped me.
“No.”
“To handle my feelings.”
She considered that.
“Grandma says kids make grown-ups sick.”
“What does that mean?”
“She gets headaches.”
“People get headaches for lots of reasons.”
“She says I give her hers.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind Lily’s ear.
“You are not responsible for Grandma’s headaches.”
“What about Daddy’s?”
“Those either.”
“He takes pills.”
“For headaches?”
She nodded.
“He says he needs them because everybody stresses him out.”
That sounded exactly like Taylor.
He had always treated discomfort like somebody else’s invoice.
Lily yawned.
I turned off the bedside lamp.
“Sleep.”
“You staying?”
“Yes.”
“In here?”
“Yes.”
She reached for my hand.
I lay on top of the covers beside her.
Within minutes, her breathing slowed.
Mine did not.
At three forty-seven, my phone vibrated.
Michelle.
I answered quietly.
“I’m filing as soon as the clerk’s office opens.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to send me every message from tonight and any prior texts involving Evelyn’s discipline of Lily.”
I stared into the dark.
“I don’t know if there are any.”
“Search.”
“And Sarah?”
“Yes.”
“Do not contact Taylor.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
She hesitated.
“He contacted me.”
I sat up.
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“He asked whether you would agree to a private arrangement.”
A cold sensation moved through me.
“What kind?”
“He wants Lily to remain with you temporarily if you agree not to pursue emergency custody until everyone has time to calm down.”
I almost spoke too loudly.
“Everyone?”
“I declined to negotiate without speaking to you.”
“What does he want in return?”
“He specifically asked that you not give police access to what he called marital communications.”
I looked at the phone.
“Why would he care about our old messages?”
“That is an excellent question.”
I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen.
The refrigerator hummed behind me.
“What counts as marital communications?”
“Could be texts, emails, shared cloud accounts, photographs, anything exchanged during the marriage.”
My eyes moved toward the stack of unopened boxes near the dining room.
I had packed quickly when I left.
Taylor had insisted we separate our belongings without drama.
He kept the desktop computer.
I took my laptop.
We had shared family photo storage, calendars, passwords, and for years, a backup account Taylor configured because he did not trust automatic syncing.
I had forgotten about it.
Then I remembered something else.
Not a memory floating conveniently into place.
A habit.
Every Sunday, Taylor used to complain that his phone was full.
He would sit at the kitchen island deleting videos while the family backup ran to an old external drive.
I had teased him for keeping a physical copy of everything like a man preparing for the collapse of civilization.
The drive had lived in a small fireproof box.
When I moved out, Taylor told me the box contained tax records and insurance documents.
He had told me to take it because most of the paperwork was mine.
I turned toward the boxes.
“Michelle.”
“I’m here.”
“I may have a backup.”
She went silent.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“In one of the boxes I brought from the house.”
“Do not open files.”
“What?”
“Listen carefully.”
Her voice had become very precise.
“If there may be evidence relevant to a criminal or custody matter, I want you to preserve it exactly as it is.”
“I can find the box.”
“Find the box.”
“Then what?”
“Photograph it where you find it and call me.”
I looked at Lily asleep in the bedroom.
Then at the cardboard boxes stacked along the wall.
For the first time since the hospital, my hands started shaking again.
Because Taylor had just asked me not to share old family communications.
And somewhere inside my apartment, there might be a drive containing exactly what he was afraid I would find.
I did not touch the boxes until I had photographed the room from three angles.
It felt absurd.
At four in the morning, wearing yesterday’s uniform pants and hospital coffee on my sleeve, I stood barefoot in my kitchen documenting cardboard like it was a crime scene.
May you like
Michelle stayed on speakerphone.
“Do you see the fireproof box?”
