Chương 7
“Who?”
“Mama. She listened to walls even when nobody was talking.”
Lily released her wrists. Red finger marks remained where she had held too tightly.
“Sorry,” Lily said.
Emma rubbed the marks.
Marcus sat on the floor rather than the bed.
“What did you dream?”
Emma stared at the rabbit. Rosa had sewn most of the belly closed, but Emma had insisted on leaving one inch open.
“The motel,” she said.
“What happened there?”
“Mama couldn’t breathe. The man at the desk said an ambulance would cost money.”
Marcus’s hands curled against his knees.
“She told him to call anyway,” Emma continued. “He said he already had. He didn’t.”
“How did you get help?”
“I walked to the gas station.”
“At night?”
She looked confused by the question. “Mama was sick.”
“How long were you gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she alive when you returned?”
Emma pressed her lips together.
Lily leaned against her shoulder.
After a long silence, Emma said, “She waited.”
Marcus lowered his head.
He had imagined Grace dying many times during seven years. In some versions she died instantly in fire, never knowing fear. In others she survived long enough to call his name. Those fantasies had been selfish, built around his absence.
He had never imagined her waiting in a motel room while their seven-year-old daughter ran beneath fluorescent lights asking strangers to call an ambulance.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Emma’s face tightened.
“For what?”
He could have named too much. His anger. His threat. His blindness. Seven birthdays with one cake. The locked drawer. Vincent’s continued place at his table.
“I wasn’t there.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I made it easy for someone to keep me from knowing.”
She picked at the rabbit’s open seam.
“Mama said you would blame yourself because men like you think everything belongs to them, even blame.”
Lily gave a small, startled laugh.
Emma looked at her.
“That sounds like Mommy,” Lily said.
“You don’t remember her.”
“Daddy tells me things.”
Emma turned to Marcus. “Good things?”
“Mostly.”
“Why?”
He considered lying.
“Because she was dead, and I was angry at her for leaving.”
Emma’s fingers stopped moving.
“I thought if I told Lily the angry parts, I would make her carry them.”
“So you told her fake parts.”
“No. Just incomplete ones.”
Emma looked down. “Mama did that too.”
The next custody meeting took place in person at the county building.
Photographers waited outside.
The paternity report had become public that morning under headlines that used words like secret, heir, underworld, and abandoned. A blurry image of Emma in Marcus’s arms appeared beside old photographs of him leaving courtrooms. Lily’s school sent a message asking that she remain home until media attention decreased.
Marcus wanted the entire sidewalk cleared.
Claire made him use the public entrance.
“You cannot present yourself as cooperative while moving reporters with men in black suits,” she said.
“They’re blocking children.”
“They want you angry.”
“I am angry.”
“Then disappoint them.”
Emma stood between Marcus and Lily. She wore a simple gray coat Rosa had purchased from a department store after rejecting three designer versions Marcus ordered. The rabbit remained under her arm.
A reporter shouted, “Emma, did your father know you were homeless?”
Marcus turned.
Emma grabbed his hand.
Her fingers were cold.
“Keep walking,” she said.
He did.
Inside, Maria Ortega reported that the home was physically secure but emotionally and operationally intertwined with Marcus’s business activities. She recommended temporary placement of both girls with a screened relative while the investigation continued.
Marcus had one living relative outside the organization: his older sister, Eva.
He had not spoken to her in eleven years.
Claire had contacted her without permission.
Eva entered the meeting wearing hospital scrubs beneath a long cardigan. She had Marcus’s dark hair, though gray showed at the temples, and the same sharp eyes without the practiced stillness. She worked as a respiratory therapist in Evanston and lived with her wife in a narrow brick house near a school.
She looked at Lily first.
Then Emma.
Then Marcus.
“You look like Dad,” she told him.
It was not a compliment.
The court approved Eva for emergency kinship placement pending a home visit.
Marcus followed her into the hallway.
“You should have called me,” he said.
“You changed your number three times.”
“You knew how to reach the office.”
“I didn’t want the office.”
Eva pressed the elevator button.
“I’m not sending them with you.”
“You are not sending anyone. A judge is.”
“You left.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t come to Grace’s funeral.”
“There was no funeral.”
“You came to the memorial.”
“I stood outside for six minutes while armed men searched my bag.”
“You knew what had happened.”
“I knew what Vincent told everyone.”
The elevator opened. Eva stepped inside.
Marcus blocked the doors.
She stared at his arm.
He moved it.
Eva held the elevator with one hand. “You want to be angry with me because that feels cleaner. Fine. Be angry in the car. The girls are watching.”
They were.
Emma stood beside Maria at the far end of the corridor. Lily’s face was rigid with humiliation.
Marcus entered the elevator.
Eva drove the girls to her house herself. Daniel followed at a distance with one unmarked security vehicle, as permitted by the temporary order.
Marcus was not permitted to stay overnight.
Eva’s home had no gate, no stone walls, and no room large enough for a security post. A plastic flamingo stood in the small backyard because Eva’s wife, June, had found it in an alley and claimed it looked determined.
Lily hated the guest room.
“The curtains are yellow,” she said.
Eva placed a folded blanket on the bed. “They were yellow when we bought them.”
“They look like mustard.”
“We don’t eat mustard in here, so you’ll survive.”
Emma touched the quilt. “Did somebody make this?”
“June’s mother. She gets restless during baseball season.”
“Why?”
“The Cubs.”
May you like
That answer seemed to satisfy Emma.
Marcus stood in the doorway, feeling unnecessary.
