Chương 4
It looked absurd on paper.
A family could change because of cat access.
Ethan sent the video through the method the officer requested. He also offered the earlier clip showing Gloria approaching the property.
The officer asked whether there were clips before that.
Ethan hesitated.
Maya noticed.
“What?”
“There’s another one.”
“From when?”
“About eight minutes earlier.”
Maya frowned.
“I wasn’t outside yet.”
“I know.”
He opened the event list.
A clip showed Gloria’s car parked at the curb. She had gotten out, walked halfway up the driveway, stopped, returned to the car, and sat behind the wheel for almost three minutes.
Then she got out again.
The officer watched.
“What’s significant about this?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan said.
Maya did.
Not evidence of a plan.
Not evidence of violence.
Just evidence that Gloria had almost left.
She had sat in that car long enough to change her mind.
Then she chose not to.
The officer took the clip too.
Gloria called again while the officer was there.
Ethan silenced the phone.
After the officer left, he had twelve missed calls.
One was from his sister Claire.
Two were from a cousin he had not spoken to since Christmas.
That was how Ethan learned his mother had begun telling people.
He opened Claire’s text.
CALL ME NOW. MOM IS HYSTERICAL.
Maya watched his face.
“What did she say?”
“She wants me to call.”
“Your mom?”
“Claire.”
“Of course.”
Ethan put the phone down.
Maya studied him.
“You can call her.”
“No.”
“Ethan.”
“I said no.”
“I don’t need you to prove anything by refusing to answer your sister.”
“I’m not proving anything.”
“You kind of are.”
He looked irritated.
That reassured her.
The perfect version of Ethan, the one who spoke carefully and never raised his voice, frightened Maya more than his irritation did. Perfection was usually his hiding place.
She pointed at the phone.
“Call Claire.”
“You just said you needed time.”
“I need time before decisions. I didn’t say you had to become Amish.”
Linda snorted.
Ethan gave Maya a look.
There she was, Maya thought.
A little mean.
A little funny.
Still herself.
He called Claire.
She answered before the first ring finished.
“What the hell is happening?”
“Mom pushed Maya.”
A pause.
Then, “What?”
“She came to the house. They argued. Mom grabbed her and pushed her. Maya fell.”
“Mom said Maya slipped.”
“I have it on video.”
Silence.
Maya could hear Claire breathing through the phone.
Finally Claire said, “Video of what?”
“The whole thing.”
“The whole thing from what angle?”
Ethan’s face changed.
Maya almost admired the question.
Claire was Gloria’s daughter too.
Doubt came naturally in their family, but it did not distribute itself equally.
“From our front-door camera.”
“Okay, but those cameras distort stuff.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“It shows Mom putting her hand on Maya.”
“Putting her hand on her how?”
“Claire.”
“I’m asking.”
“She pushes her.”
“Intentionally?”
Maya looked away.
Ethan’s voice dropped.
“I don’t know what intention looks like on a video.”
“Exactly.”
“No. Not exactly.”
Claire became quiet.
Ethan stood and walked toward the window.
“Maya told her not to touch her. Mom followed her. Mom put her hand on her anyway. Maya fell.”
“Is the baby okay?”
Maya hated the question.
Not because Claire meant harm.
Because people kept asking about the pregnancy before asking about Maya, as though she had become the packaging around something more valuable.
Ethan glanced at her.
“The doctors are still watching Maya. They haven’t found anything alarming so far.”
“I asked about the baby.”
“I answered about my wife.”
Maya looked up.
Claire went silent.
Ethan seemed surprised by his own sentence.
Linda examined her pineapple slippers with exaggerated interest.
Claire’s voice, when it returned, was smaller.
“Mom is a wreck.”
“I’m sure.”
“She keeps saying she didn’t mean for Maya to fall.”
“I believe she didn’t mean for her to fall.”
Maya stared at him.
Ethan continued.
“That doesn’t make what she did okay.”
“Are you calling the police?”
“They were already here.”
Claire inhaled sharply.
“Oh my God, Ethan.”
“What?”
“You called the police on Mom?”
“Maya made a report.”
“You let her?”
Ethan’s head came up.
The room changed again.
Maya saw it happen in him.
A door closing.
Not between Ethan and Claire.
Between Ethan and the version of himself who could pretend Claire’s question was normal.
“She didn’t need my permission.”
Claire began speaking faster.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Ethan, Mom is sixty-four years old. Dad’s been gone three years. She’s alone half the time. She got emotional. She made a mistake.”
Maya looked down at her hands.
There it was.
The family biography as defense.
Grief had become Gloria’s permanent visa into other people’s boundaries.
Ethan’s father, Raymond, had died after a brief illness three years earlier. Gloria had cared for him at home through the worst months. Ethan had been there too, but he had gone back to his job after each weekend because somebody needed to keep working, and because his father had asked him to.
Claire had stayed closer.
Gloria had never said Ethan abandoned them.
She did not need to.
She said things like, “Claire was such a rock.”
Or, “Your father always knew who would be there when it got hard.”
Then she would smile and touch Ethan’s arm and tell him not to look guilty.
He always did.
Now he said, “Being lonely doesn’t make your hands somebody else’s problem.”
Claire made a sound halfway between anger and disbelief.
“You sound like her.”
Maya looked at Ethan.
He did not ask which her.
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Ethan—”
He ended the call.
For several seconds he stood with the phone still against his ear.
Then he lowered it.
“I sound like you.”
Maya almost said, Apparently.
She didn’t.
He sat down.
“I’m sorry.”
She knew which apology he meant.
May you like
That was the problem.
There were too many available.
