Chương 8
No attempt to retrieve her belongings without coordination.
No approach to the school or Leah’s residence.
Grant stared at the table while the conditions were read.
He did not look angry.
He looked insulted.
There was a difference.
His attorney later told him privately, “If you violate that order because you think you have some parental exception nobody else understands, you will make my job significantly worse.”
Grant said, “She’s my daughter.”
“Not an exception.”
“She needs clothes.”
“Her aunt can get clothes.”
“She doesn’t know what Maya likes.”
“Then Maya will survive an incorrectly selected T-shirt.”
Grant glared.
The attorney closed his folder.
“You need to hear me. Right now, you are treating every limit as proof people are against you. That is not helping.”
“You think I did it too?”
“I think I’m your lawyer.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you’re paying for.”
Grant looked away.
For the first time since his arrest, he became quiet.
He had not expected the screws to cause permanent injury.
That was true.
It was also a useless truth.
In Grant’s mind, there had always been a difference between hurting and injuring.
His own father had believed in that difference.
A belt could hurt without injuring.
Standing in a corner until legs shook could hurt without injuring.
A hand around the back of a neck could hurt without injuring.
Grant had spent twenty years telling himself he was nothing like his father because he did not use a belt.
When Allison was alive, she sometimes stopped him before anger became action.
Not always by arguing.
Sometimes she simply looked at him.
“What?” he would say.
She would keep looking.
He hated that look.
After she died, there was nobody left in the house who could give it to him.
Maya had inherited her eyes.
That had become difficult.
Grant did not think of himself as a man who tortured children.
He thought of himself as a father whose daughter had become manipulative after her mother died.
He thought the school counselor had encouraged disobedience.
He thought Leah had always judged him.
He thought doctors made children fragile.
He thought grief had made Maya selfish.
He thought grief had made him strict.
He had a thought for everything.
The screws were supposed to teach a lesson.
That was the explanation he never gave his lawyer.
He had dulled the sharpest tips against a file.
He had tested the boot with his hand.
He had told himself the sock was thick.
He had told himself Maya would stop fighting him before real damage happened.
He had told himself that if she associated running away with discomfort, she might stop trying to contact Leah.
Each sentence had made the next one easier.
At the hospital, when Ethan raised the shears, Grant had seen the entire structure of those sentences collapse.
His panic had done the rest.
The prosecution did not know all of that.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
Cases were built from what could be shown, not from the private story a defendant told himself.
Maya spent her first week with Leah under a temporary safety arrangement while background checks and home assessments continued.
The apartment was smaller than she remembered.
The hallway still squeaked.
Pickle was fatter.
Maya stood outside the neighbor’s door while Leah knocked.
Mrs. Alvarez opened it holding a laundry basket.
She stared at Maya.
“Oh.”
Maya stared back.
Pickle slipped between Mrs. Alvarez’s ankles.
The orange cat looked at Maya with total indifference.
“You said he’d remember me,” Maya told Leah.
“I said probably.”
“You lied.”
“I estimated badly.”
Pickle sniffed Maya’s sock.
Then rubbed against her shin.
Maya looked down.
“He remembers.”
Mrs. Alvarez put the laundry basket on the floor and covered her mouth.
Leah said quietly, “Please don’t.”
Mrs. Alvarez nodded several times.
She did not cry.
Instead she said, “He has fleas.”
Leah blinked.
“What?”
“He doesn’t really. I just needed to say something normal.”
Maya crouched.
“Can I pet him?”
“He’ll be offended if you don’t.”
That evening Maya slept on Leah’s couch because the bedroom prepared for her felt too unfamiliar.
Leah had bought purple sheets.
Maya hated purple.
“You used to like it,” Leah said.
“When I was six.”
“That was two years ago.”
“Exactly.”
Leah stared at the bedding.
“I kept the receipt.”
Maya chose gray.
Leah exchanged the sheets the next day.
It was a small thing.
Maya noticed that nobody argued with her about it.
That bothered her almost as much as if Leah had.
“What if I pick something bad?” she asked while they stood in the store.
“Then we return it.”
“What if you already washed it?”
“Then we live with a bad sheet decision.”
“What if it costs money?”
“Most things cost money.”
“Dad says returns make stores think you’re stealing.”
“Your dad has a complicated relationship with retail.”
Maya looked at her sharply.
Leah’s stomach dropped.
She had mocked him.
Even gently, even accurately, it was the wrong move.
“I shouldn’t make jokes about your dad to you.”
Maya touched a blue sheet set.
“Why?”
“Because he’s still your dad.”
“He put screws in my boot.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So you shouldn’t have to decide how you feel about him just because I have feelings about him.”
Maya rubbed the fabric between her fingers.
After a while she said, “These are too scratchy.”
They bought gray cotton sheets.
At school, rumors had already started.
Children knew something had happened.
Adults had tried to prevent details from spreading.
Adults were poor at preventing details from spreading.
One child said Maya’s father had broken both her legs.
Another said he had been arrested by the FBI.
Connor, the pencil chewer, asked whether Grant was going to electric chair.
Maya said, “That’s not even how it works.”
Connor looked impressed.
“You know?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because you’re dumb.”
The teacher intervened.
May you like
Maya was sent to the counselor’s office for calling him dumb.
She sat in the same chair where, weeks earlier, she had told the counselor that her father became angry when she asked about Aunt Leah.
