Chương 2
This was different.
This was recognition.
Ethan gave the dispatcher the address.
He described the chair.
The mark on Sophie’s cheek.
The allegation of something being removed from his home office.
He did not say Natalie had abused the children for months because he did not know that.
He did not say the memory card contained evidence because he did not know that either.
He had spent most of his adult life in rooms where people destroyed themselves by insisting on facts they did not possess.
So he said only what he could see.
Natalie paced once toward the cream sofa and back.
“This is humiliating.”
Ethan almost laughed.
The sentence was so completely Natalie that for one strange second he felt relief.
Then Sophie whispered, “Dad?”
He crouched.
She leaned close enough that her hair brushed his cheek.
“Please don’t let her take us.”
The relief disappeared.
Ethan looked at her for several seconds.
“Has she told you she’s taking you somewhere?”
Sophie nodded.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
Natalie cut in.
“This conversation is over.”
Ethan stood.
“No. It’s starting.”
Her face hardened.
“You don’t question my children without me.”
The words struck the room with more force than the chair had.
My children.
Ethan saw Sophie hear it.
He saw Noah hear it.
Six years earlier, when Ethan first met them, Sophie had been three and Noah had been barely two. They had called him Ethan until Sophie, without ceremony, started calling him Dad one morning while asking for strawberry yogurt.
No announcement.
No family conference.
Dad, can you open this?
He had looked toward Natalie across the kitchen because he thought she might object.
She had cried.
Two years later, after the adoption was finalized, Natalie had given him a silver frame containing a photograph from the courthouse steps. On the back, she had written, Now they have the father they deserve.
The frame was still upstairs.
Or Ethan thought it was.
The realization that he had not noticed it in months came and went before he could decide whether it mattered.
The dispatcher told him officers were on the way.
Natalie folded her arms.
“Fine.”
Ethan ended the call.
“Fine?”
“You want police in the house? Have police in the house. I’m done protecting you from your own impulses.”
Noah’s grip tightened.
Ethan looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
Natalie smiled.
“You’ll find out.”
There were plenty of things Ethan could have said to that.
He said none of them.
He moved Sophie and Noah toward the sitting area near the staircase, far enough from Natalie that she could not reach them without crossing his path.
Sophie sat at the edge of the sofa.
Noah remained standing.
“You can sit,” Ethan told him.
The boy looked at the furniture as if chairs had become unreliable objects.
“I’m okay.”
Ethan swallowed.
“All right.”
Natalie was watching him.
Something close to contempt had returned to her face.
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Perform.”
He looked at her.
“Who am I performing for?”
“The children.”
Sophie’s eyes lowered.
Natalie continued.
“You make everything into this noble little rescue. You come home, you fix a problem, everybody worships you for twenty-four hours, and then you disappear again.”
There it was.
Not entirely false.
Ethan had been in Chicago three nights the previous week. Denver for two days before that. His construction group had spent eighteen months absorbing a regional firm whose finances had turned out to be worse than anyone admitted before the acquisition. His calendar had become a series of airports, conference rooms, and dinners he did not want to attend.
He had told himself the travel was temporary.
He had been telling himself that for almost a year.
“I’m home now,” he said.
Natalie’s expression flickered.
“That’s the problem.”
The doorbell sounded even though the front door was still open.
Two uniformed officers stood outside beneath the portico.
Ethan stepped away from the children only after Sophie nodded that she was all right.
The first officer was a woman in her forties named Ramirez. The second, younger, introduced himself as Coley, which caused Noah to look up at the near-match to their surname before looking quickly down again.
Ramirez entered slowly.
She surveyed the chair, the distance between the adults, the children on the sofa, and the handbag on the floor.
“Everybody leave things where they are for now.”
Natalie spoke before Ethan could.
“My husband is having some kind of episode.”
Ramirez looked at Ethan.
“Sir?”
Ethan gave his account.
Short.
Specific.
Natalie interrupted twice.
Ramirez stopped her both times.
“You’ll have a chance.”
When Ethan finished, Coley took him toward the far side of the foyer while Ramirez spoke to Natalie.
Ethan watched Sophie.
Coley noticed.
“We’ll talk to the kids separately too.”
“I want to be where they can see me.”
“That can usually be arranged.”
“They’re frightened.”
“I can see that.”
The officer’s tone contained no accusation, which somehow made Ethan feel worse.
Coley asked whether Sophie’s cheek had looked like that earlier.
Ethan said he had been home since five forty and had not seen the mark until Sophie came into the foyer.
“What time is it now?”
“Seven twelve.”
Ethan looked at his watch and saw seven sixteen.
He corrected himself.
“Sorry. Seven sixteen.”
Coley wrote something down.
“Any history of physical incidents between Mrs. Cole and the children?”
Ethan started to say no.
The word reached the back of his teeth.
He stopped.
“I don’t know.”
It was the first answer that frightened him more than the question.
Coley waited.
Ethan rubbed his thumb against the edge of his phone.
“I would have said no fifteen minutes ago.”
“All right.”
“I travel.”
“How often?”
“Too often lately.”
Coley made another note.
Across the room, Natalie’s voice sharpened.
“You cannot seriously be treating a nine-year-old’s imagination as evidence.”
Ramirez replied too quietly for Ethan to hear.
Natalie’s expression changed.
May you like
She looked toward Sophie again.
Ethan moved half a step.
