Chương 4
She did not want to guess.
Ava walked toward the hallway.
Then stopped.
"Is Lily okay?"
Emily looked at her.
"Yes."
Ava nodded.
But she did not seem relieved.
She seemed like someone hearing an answer she wanted to believe.
"Did she tell you what happened?"
Emily stayed quiet.
Ava looked down.
"She didn't mean to take the eggs."
"I know."
"Mom was already upset before that."
The words changed the room.
Emily felt it immediately.
"Why?"
Ava picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
"I don't know."
Children often said they did not know when they knew too much.
"What happened before breakfast?"
Ava looked toward the window.
"I heard Mom on the phone."
"What did she say?"
Ava hesitated.
Then she whispered, "She said she was running out of chances."
Emily did not move for several seconds.
The sentence felt heavier than it should have.
"Running out of chances for what?" Emily asked.
Ava's shoulders lifted slightly.
"I don't know."
But the way she said it told Emily there was something she did know.
Not everything.
Maybe not even enough to explain.
But enough to make her afraid.
Emily pulled out a chair.
"Sit down for a minute."
Ava looked toward the doorway.
"Mom said not to be here long."
The words were casual.
The fear underneath them was not.
"Did she say why?"
Ava shook her head.
Emily did not push.
She had learned something from Lily.
Children did not open up because adults demanded answers.
They opened up when they felt safe enough to stop protecting everyone else.
Ava sat at the table.
The same table where Lily had been sitting the morning before.
Emily went to the kitchen and poured her a glass of water.
When she returned, Ava was staring at the place where the eggs had landed.
"I cleaned it," Emily said.
Ava nodded.
"I know."
"You saw?"
Ava looked down.
"I was upstairs."
Emily sat across from her.
"You were upstairs when it happened?"
Ava nodded.
"Then how did you know?"
Ava twisted the glass between her hands.
"I heard it."
The answer was quiet.
Emily felt a cold feeling move through her.
"What did you hear?"
Ava looked embarrassed.
Like she was afraid the answer itself was wrong.
"The pan."
Neither of them spoke.
Ava took a small sip of water.
"Mom gets upset when things don't go how she planned."
Emily looked at her carefully.
"How often?"
Ava shrugged.
"Sometimes."
That word carried too much weight.
Emily leaned back.
She wanted to be careful.
She did not want to turn Ava into a source of information.
She did not want to make the child feel like she had betrayed her mother.
"Does your mom ever scare you?"
Ava stared at the table.
The question seemed to take a long time to reach her.
"Not usually."
Emily noticed the word.
Usually.
"What about yesterday?"
Ava rubbed her thumb against the side of the glass.
"Yesterday was different."
A sound came from outside.
A car driving slowly past the house.
Both of them looked toward the window.
The moment passed.
But Emily remembered it.
The instinctive fear.
The way Ava checked the street before answering.
She knew that behavior.
She had seen it in children before.
Not always from something terrible.
Sometimes from living around unpredictability.
"Where is your mom right now?" Emily asked.
Ava looked uncomfortable.
"She went to the apartment."
"The old apartment?"
Ava nodded.
Emily frowned.
Rachel had told everyone the apartment was gone.
The lease had ended.
Her things had been moved out.
"Why would she go there?"
Ava looked confused.
"I don't know."
Emily did not say anything.
Because suddenly there was another question.
Why had Rachel needed to leave so quickly?
At the time, everyone accepted the explanation.
Divorce.
Money problems.
Bad timing.
Life falling apart.
But now Emily started noticing all the things she had not noticed before.
The unopened mail Rachel kept in her room.
The calls she took outside.
The way she became irritated whenever someone asked simple questions.
The way she always seemed one unexpected problem away from collapsing.
Ava finished her water.
"Can I get my notebook?"
Emily nodded.
"Of course."
She watched the girl walk down the hallway.
There was something painful about watching a child move through a house like she was trying not to disturb the air.
Emily found herself thinking about all the times she had called Rachel dramatic.
All the times she had laughed and said, "You are the only person who can turn a small problem into a crisis."
Maybe sometimes Rachel did make things bigger.
But maybe sometimes the problems had been bigger than anyone wanted to admit.
Ava returned with the notebook pressed against her chest.
"Thank you."
Emily walked her to the door.
"Ava."
The girl stopped.
"If you ever feel scared, you can call me."
Ava nodded.
"Okay."
But she did not say thank you.
She did not promise.
She only held the notebook tighter.
After she left, Emily closed the door and immediately called Rachel.
The phone rang four times.
Then voicemail.
Emily waited through the message.
She almost hung up.
Then she spoke.
"Rachel, we need to talk."
She stopped.
The sentence sounded too normal.
Too small.
She tried again.
"This is not about yesterday anymore."
She looked around the quiet house.
"It's about what has been happening before yesterday."
She ended the call.
Rachel did not return it.
Not that hour.
Not the next.
By noon, Emily was sitting at her desk at work staring at an email she had read three times without understanding.
Her supervisor, Mark, stopped beside her office doorway.
"You okay?"
Emily looked up.
"Yeah."
Mark glanced at her.
He had worked with her for five years.
He knew the difference between her normal tiredness and the kind she was carrying now.
"No, you are not."
Emily looked back at the screen.
"I have a family thing."
May you like
Mark nodded.
"Do you need to leave?"
