Chương 2
"Then why didn't you say that before?"
She looked at him.
The silence between them became its own answer.
I had known Claire for months.
Not well.
Not personally.
But enough to know she hated being questioned.
She liked being the person with the answers.
The person people trusted.
The person who walked into a room and made everyone feel like she had already handled everything.
That was part of what made the moment so disturbing.
Claire was not acting like someone protecting a child from danger.
She was acting like someone protecting herself from being exposed.
Mark took the baby into the living room.
I followed.
Claire blocked me again.
"You are leaving."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"You are not coming near him."
"I called his pediatrician last week when he had a fever."
"You are not his mother."
The sentence was cruel.
Maybe she meant it to be.
But it revealed something else.
She was afraid.
People usually did not attack the safest person in the room unless they believed that person had the ability to take something away.
The police arrived twenty minutes later.
Not because anyone called them from the kitchen.
Because Mark called after taking the baby upstairs and seeing more marks beneath the blanket.
The waiting was worse than the violence.
I sat on the edge of the couch holding a bag of ice against my face.
Claire sat across from me with a towel pressed to her forehead.
We looked like two people from completely different versions of the same story.
The officers asked questions separately.
They asked slowly.
They asked the same things more than once.
They asked what happened before they arrived.
They asked who had access to the baby.
They asked why there was flour in the sink.
That question made Claire pause.
Only briefly.
But again, I saw it.
"I was baking," she said.
"For what?"
She looked toward the kitchen.
"For a charity event."
The officer wrote something down.
"What charity event?"
Claire did not answer immediately.
And that was the first time I wondered whether the baby in the sink was only the beginning of what we were about to uncover.
The officer waited while Claire looked toward the kitchen as if the answer might be written somewhere on the walls.
"It was just something I was doing for the neighborhood," she finally said.
The officer nodded, but he did not write immediately.
"What neighborhood?"
Claire pressed the towel harder against her forehead.
"The one I live in."
"Which neighborhood?"
"Maple Ridge."
Mark looked at her.
It was the first time that evening I saw him look confused by something she said.
The officer noticed too.
He asked Claire to explain.
She gave a vague answer about a group of women who exchanged baked goods and helped families during difficult times.
It sounded harmless.
Almost too harmless.
That was the problem.
People rarely hid things that were simple.
While the officers continued their questions, a paramedic examined the baby upstairs.
Mark stayed near the staircase.
He kept looking up every few seconds.
I understood that look because I had worn it myself.
It was the look of someone trying to decide whether they had missed something obvious.
After almost an hour, the paramedic came back down.
The room became silent before he even spoke.
"The baby has a minor injury around the ankle," he said.
Mark closed his eyes for a second.
"How bad?"
"It does not appear severe, but we want him checked by a doctor."
Claire immediately stood.
"I can take him."
The paramedic looked at her.
"You can come with him."
That answer should have comforted her.
Instead, she looked irritated.
It was small.
A tightening around her mouth.
A change in posture.
The kind of reaction most people would miss if they were not already looking for it.
The officer asked if anyone else cared for the baby regularly.
Mark answered before Claire could.
"Rachel."
I looked up.
"Me?"
"You said she had been helping."
"I am his temporary caregiver during the day."
The officer turned toward me.
"How long?"
"Almost six months."
"And before today, any concerns?"
I looked at Claire.
She was watching me.
Not with anger this time.
With calculation.
That scared me more.
"I noticed some things," I said.
Mark looked at me.
"What things?"
I hated that I had waited.
That was the part that would stay with me.
Not the cabinet.
Not the blood.
The waiting.
Because sometimes the worst thing you can admit is that you saw something wrong and convinced yourself there was an explanation.
"She gets overwhelmed when he cries," I said.
Claire laughed once.
It was a short, empty sound.
"Everyone gets overwhelmed."
"Not everyone shakes when they say they are fine."
The room went quiet.
Mark stared at me.
The officer stopped writing.
"What do you mean by shakes?"
I looked down at my hands.
I had noticed it weeks earlier.
Claire would stand in the nursery doorway after putting the baby down and flex her fingers like she was trying to release tension from them.
I had told myself it was exhaustion.
Foster parenting was exhausting.
A newborn was exhausting.
A person did not have to be cruel to be tired.
That was what I had repeated.
Again and again.
"Rachel," Mark said softly.
I looked at him.
There was something different in his voice.
Not accusation.
Fear.
"What else?"
I swallowed.
"There were mornings when she didn't want anyone holding him."
Claire crossed her arms.
"Because I was bonding with him."
"No."
The word came out before I could stop it.
Everyone looked at me.
I hated being the center of attention.
I hated speaking when people were already deciding whether I was believable.
But I kept going.
"Because you said nobody else should confuse him."
Mark frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Claire looked away.
"She is twisting things."
May you like
The officer raised a hand.
"One person at a time."
