Chương 5
He went still.
She had not meant it cruelly.
Maybe a little.
Charles lowered himself onto a plastic chair.
“Yes.”
“Is that where he got it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always say that now.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
He leaned back.
“I’m finding it useful.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
He rubbed one hand over his face.
“When I was younger, I disliked not knowing things. I thought not knowing meant you had failed to prepare.”
“Did it?”
“Sometimes.”
“And now?”
“Now I think pretending to know can be worse.”
Mara sat beside him.
For a minute neither spoke.
A janitor pushed a wide mop down the corridor.
The television in the waiting area had changed to a local news program.
Mara stared at Charles’s shoes.
“The bottle was in his coffee cabinet.”
Charles’s head turned.
“You told the police?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Behind a tin.”
“Tell them again tomorrow if they ask.”
“Why?”
“Because people will ask you the same things more than once.”
“To see if I lie?”
“Sometimes to see what stays the same. Sometimes because different people need the information.”
She frowned.
“I hate it.”
“I suspect you’ll hate quite a lot of the next few weeks.”
She looked at him.
Charles winced.
“That was badly phrased.”
“A little.”
He surprised her by laughing.
Not much.
The sound vanished almost immediately.
Then Mara asked the question that had been waiting under every other question.
“Is Emma going home with Dad?”
Charles did not answer fast enough.
Her stomach dropped.
“No,” he said.
“Promise.”
His face changed.
Charles Bennett had promised shareholders things, employees things, judges things, lenders things, his dead wife things, himself things.
Mara had never seen him frightened by the word.
“Promise.”
He took her hand.
“I promise I will do everything I can to keep both of you safe.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t control everything.”
“You always do.”
The sentence struck him harder than she expected.
He squeezed her hand once.
“No,” he said. “I’ve just been very good at making people think I do.”
Daniel was not arrested that night.
That fact outraged Charles.
Walter had to explain three times that outrage was not a legal standard.
Police had questions, evidence to process, medical information to obtain, and competing accounts to evaluate. Daniel’s attorney advised him not to speak further. The medication bottle presented serious questions, but ownership, prescription history, contents, and actual use needed to be established.
Charles wanted speed.
The system offered procedure.
He hated procedure when it did not belong to him.
By morning, emergency arrangements were made for the girls to leave with Vanessa under conditions that kept them away from Daniel while authorities and attorneys sorted through what happened next.
Mara heard enough adult conversation to understand that nothing was permanent.
She disliked every version of temporary.
Temporary meant someone could change their mind.
Temporary meant Daniel existed just outside whatever wall had been built.
Vanessa drove the girls not to their house but to Charles’s.
Mara sat in the back seat beside Emma.
The morning sun felt offensive.
People jogged.
A landscaping crew unloaded equipment.
A man at a stoplight drank from an enormous plastic cup.
The world had the nerve to continue being normal.
Emma fell asleep before they reached the highway.
Vanessa looked at her in the rearview mirror every few minutes.
Mara noticed.
She said nothing.
When they arrived, Rosa had made pancakes.
Nobody ate them.
Charles took a business call in his study and came out nine minutes later furious at himself for having taken it.
Walter had gone home to shower and returned wearing another dark suit that looked exactly like the first one.
“Do you own any blue shirts?” Mara asked him.
Walter looked down at his white shirt.
“One.”
“What happened to it?”
“My wife dislikes it.”
“Why?”
“She says I look like a dentist.”
Mara nearly laughed.
Then she remembered why Walter was there.
The laugh died.
He seemed to understand.
He did not try to revive it.
By noon, phones began filling with messages.
Vanessa’s sister.
Charles’s business partner.
Parents from the girls’ school.
A neighbor who had seen police vehicles.
Daniel’s mother’s cousin, whom nobody had spoken to in two years.
A charity board member.
Someone from a local publication.
Someone Charles suspected was pretending to be a concerned friend while collecting details.
Vanessa turned her phone off.
Charles refused.
Walter eventually took it away from him.
“You are not helping.”
“I need to know what’s being said.”
“No. You want to know.”
“There’s a difference?”
“A large one.”
Charles glared.
Walter put the phone in his own pocket.
“You can fire me later.”
“I don’t employ you.”
“Excellent. Saves paperwork.”
Mara listened from the sofa.
The adults had become strange versions of themselves.
Charles obeyed people.
Walter made jokes.
Vanessa sat with both hands wrapped around a cup she never drank from.
Emma slept for nearly four hours.
When she woke, she asked for cereal.
Mara had never been so happy to hear anyone ask for cereal.
Then Vanessa said, “I’ll get you some milk,” and Emma began screaming.
It happened so quickly that everyone froze.
Not theatrical screaming.
Pure panic.
Emma kicked backward against the couch, slapped Vanessa’s hand away, and knocked the empty cup onto the floor.
“No milk!”
Vanessa stumbled back.
“All right.”
“No milk!”
“All right, baby.”
“No!”
Vanessa lowered herself to the carpet.
“I won’t give you any.”
Emma pressed into Mara.
“No white cup.”
Mara looked at her mother.
Vanessa’s face was wet.
She did not wipe it.
Mara put one arm around Emma.
“Cereal dry,” she said.
Emma nodded hard.
“Dry.”
Rosa brought a bowl without saying anything.
Emma ate cornflakes one at a time with her fingers.
Nobody mentioned the milk.
That afternoon, investigators returned to the Bennetts’ home with authorization to collect items relevant to the allegations.
Mara did not go.
May you like
She later learned what they found in pieces.
The coffee tin in the cabinet.
