Chương 4
Claire zipped Ethan’s jacket.
“Which part?”
Ryan grimaced.
“Fair.”
“No. Which part?”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“About controlling him.”
Ethan looked up.
Ryan’s eyes flicked toward the child and then away.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why did you?”
Ryan took longer to answer than Claire expected.
“Because Vanessa said he’d done it.”
“You watched the horse fall.”
“Not clearly.”
“You saw enough to smirk at him while he was scared.”
Ryan’s face reddened.
“I know.”
Claire picked up her purse.
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No.”
It was the first useful thing he had said.
He crouched a little, not all the way to Ethan’s level.
“Hey, Ethan.”
Ethan stayed close to Claire.
Ryan seemed to understand that he had no right to ask for more.
“I was wrong,” he said. “You didn’t break it. And I shouldn’t have talked about you like that.”
Ethan studied him.
“Okay.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was simply the answer he had.
Ryan stood.
Claire opened the front door.
Cold evening air moved into the foyer.
Behind them, Vanessa’s voice rose from the dining room.
“This is being turned into something it wasn’t.”
Claire stopped.
For one second she almost went back.
She wanted the fight now. She wanted every stored sentence of thirty-one years.
Instead she looked down at Ethan.
He was tired. His cheeks were blotchy. There was a faint mark on his wrist from where the edge of the tablet case had pressed into him when Vanessa pulled it away.
Claire stepped outside.
The porch light came on automatically.
Ethan held her hand all the way to the car.
He did not speak until she had buckled him into the back seat.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Is forty thousand dollars more than our car?”
Claire glanced at the dashboard.
“Probably.”
“Way more?”
“Yes.”
He considered that.
“Are we going to have to pay it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the house.
Vanessa was visible through one of the front windows, moving across the dining room.
“Because she said I broke it.”
“The video shows you didn’t.”
“What if she keeps saying it?”
Claire sat on the edge of the back seat.
The question was too old for seven.
She touched his knee.
“Then she keeps saying something that isn’t true.”
“But what happens?”
“People who care about the truth look at what happened.”
“What if they don’t?”
Claire had no good answer.
She thought of every time she had been told, as a child, that Vanessa was older and therefore probably remembered correctly. Every time Helen had said, Your sister wouldn’t make that up. Every time Robert had told them both to apologize because determining who started an argument took too long.
She had grown into an adult who collected screenshots during disagreements.
She saved receipts.
She hated deleting text messages.
Until that moment she had never connected those habits to anything.
She looked at her son.
“Then we pay attention to who those people are.”
Ethan frowned.
“That sounds mean.”
“It might.”
“Grandma believed the camera.”
“She did.”
“Grandpa too.”
“Yes.”
He leaned his head against the seat.
“Can we go home?”
“Yes.”
Claire shut his door.
The drive took twenty-three minutes.
For the first ten, Ethan stayed silent.
Claire did not turn on music.
Streetlights moved across the windshield. She stopped at a red light beside a pharmacy and realized she was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to hurt.
She loosened her hands.
From the back seat came Ethan’s voice.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Did Aunt Vanessa hate my drawing?”
Claire blinked.
“What?”
“The horse I drew. She grabbed the tablet when Grandma was looking at it.”
“I don’t think it was about your drawing.”
“Oh.”
A pause.
“I thought the ears were good.”
“They were very good.”
“They’re hard.”
“I know.”
“You always make them like bunny ears.”
Claire looked at him in the rearview mirror.
He was almost smiling.
“That happened once.”
“Three times.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
The light turned green.
Claire drove on.
At home, Ethan took his shoes off at the door and put them in the wrong place. Claire moved them into the small tray automatically, then wondered why she cared.
He asked for cereal.
It was nearly nine at night.
“Cereal?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You barely ate dinner.”
“I know.”
“What kind?”
“Cinnamon.”
She poured him a bowl.
He sat at the kitchen island in his socks and ate while Claire stood by the sink.
Her phone had begun vibrating before they reached home.
She had not checked it.
Now she did.
Nine messages.
Three from her mother.
Two from her father.
One from Margaret.
One from Ryan.
Two from Vanessa.
Claire opened Margaret’s first.
Home safe?
Claire typed yes.
Margaret responded almost immediately.
Good. I’m sorry I didn’t speak sooner.
Claire stared at that sentence.
She set the phone down.
Ethan was arranging cereal squares along the rim of his bowl.
“Why aren’t you eating them?”
“These are the guards.”
“Guards for what?”
“The milk.”
“Seems dangerous.”
“It is.”
She sat beside him.
He ate one of the guards.
Claire’s phone buzzed again.
Vanessa.
This has gone far enough. We need to talk before Mom and Dad turn this into a disaster.
Claire did not answer.
Another message came.
I did NOT intend to hit Ethan. You know that.
Claire put the phone facedown.
Ethan looked at it.
“Is that her?”
“Yes.”
“What does she want?”
“To talk.”
“Are you going to?”
“Not tonight.”
He nodded as though that settled the matter.
Then, after a while, he asked, “Can I sleep with the hall light on?”
“Of course.”
He was already in bed when Claire noticed he had placed his tablet facedown on the dresser.
Usually it charged beside him.
She sat on the edge of his bed.
“You want me to plug that in?”
“No.”
“Battery’s low.”
“I don’t care.”
Claire watched him pull the blanket up.
“Okay.”
He looked at the ceiling.
“Mom?”
May you like
“Yeah?”
“If somebody tries to take my stuff, am I supposed to let go?”
