Chương 2
Then she stood.
Then she sat again.
“Is there a weapon?”
Ethan looked at the vase.
“I don’t know what you’d call it. A ceramic vase. She had it raised over my daughter.”
Maya leaned toward him.
“Daddy.”
He lowered the phone.
“What?”
“I’m thirsty.”
It was so ordinary that his chest hurt.
“Okay.”
He looked through the glass at the kitchen.
Rachel was between them and the refrigerator.
“I’ll get you water in a minute.”
“My bottle’s under the chair.”
He saw the purple bottle inside.
“Okay. We’ll get it.”
Maya nodded.
The dispatcher was speaking again.
Ethan listened.
He answered.
He kept his voice level.
He did not look away from Rachel.
Two patrol cars arrived nine minutes later.
Those nine minutes felt longer than the previous year.
Rachel tried once to come outside.
Ethan told her to stop.
She did.
She sent him three text messages from fifteen feet away.
Please don’t do this in front of Maya.
You know I would never hurt her.
Call Mom before you make this worse.
He did not answer.
When the officers came through the side gate, Maya slipped off the patio chair and stood behind Ethan.
One officer, a woman with gray threaded through her dark hair, crouched several feet away instead of approaching Maya.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Officer Ruiz.”
Maya looked at Ethan.
He nodded once.
“You don’t have to talk to me right now,” Ruiz said. “I just wanted you to know who I am.”
Maya whispered, “Okay.”
The second officer went inside.
Rachel began talking immediately.
Even through the glass Ethan could recognize the rhythm of his sister when she was scared: fast, precise, too many details.
Officer Ruiz asked Ethan what he had seen.
He told her.
He did not improve the story.
He did not add what he feared Rachel had intended to do.
He repeated the sentence he had heard exactly.
Ruiz wrote it down.
When she asked about the bruise, Ethan said, “I noticed it after I came inside.”
“Do you know how she got it?”
“No.”
Maya looked at the pool.
Ruiz noticed and changed the subject.
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Maya.”
“And the other woman?”
“My sister. Rachel Carter.”
Ruiz paused.
That was the first time anyone reacted to the relationship.
“Your sister?”
“Yes.”
Behind the glass, Rachel was pointing toward the backpack.
Ethan nearly went inside.
Ruiz said, “Stay here.”
He did.
The other officer came outside ten minutes later.
Rachel came behind him.
No handcuffs.
That infuriated Ethan in a way he knew was not rational.
He wanted the world to look as serious as the inside of his body felt.
Rachel had her purse over one shoulder.
She would not look at Maya.
“Ms. Carter is going to leave for now,” the officer said.
“For now?”
“We’re documenting what happened. We’ll need follow-up.”
“She threatened my daughter.”
“I understand what you reported.”
“You saw the vase.”
“I saw the vase.”
“That’s it?”
Rachel turned toward the front door.
Ethan stepped forward.
Officer Ruiz moved slightly between them.
That small movement embarrassed him.
He stopped.
Rachel looked at him then.
Her eyes were wet.
“I didn’t hit her with the vase,” she said.
Maya’s voice came from behind Ethan.
“You hit me with your hand.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
Nobody moved.
Ethan heard the pool filter click off.
Officer Ruiz looked at Maya but did not immediately ask a question.
Rachel’s mouth opened.
“Sweetheart, I—”
“Don’t call her that,” Ethan said.
Ruiz gave him a look.
He shut his mouth.
Rachel left.
The officer followed her to the driveway.
Maya stood beside Ethan, staring at the wet footprints he had tracked across the patio.
He crouched again.
“You thirsty?”
She nodded.
He went inside with Ruiz and retrieved the purple bottle.
The vase remained on the dining table.
He did not touch it.
For the rest of his life, he suspected he would remember absurd details about that room: a sliced lime drying beside the kitchen sink, the television paused on a cartoon Maya had not been watching, one of Rachel’s black boots leaving a faint crescent of dirt near the entry rug.
The ordinary things offended him.
The house should have looked damaged.
Instead it looked like somewhere people could have brunch.
Ruiz asked whether Ethan wanted medical evaluation for Maya.
He said yes too quickly.
Maya heard.
“No shots.”
“No shots,” he said.
Ruiz said, “I can’t promise what a doctor will recommend.”
Ethan glanced at her.
She was right.
He had already made one promise he did not control.
He corrected himself.
“We’ll ask what they need to do. I’ll stay with you.”
Maya considered this.
“Can I bring Bunny?”
Bunny was a gray stuffed rabbit whose right ear had been sewn back on twice.
“Yeah.”
“It’s upstairs.”
“I’ll get it.”
“No.”
The sharpness of her answer stopped him.
Maya looked toward the staircase.
“Come with me.”
He went with her.
At the top of the stairs she reached for his hand without looking at him.
He held it.
Her bedroom door was open. A glitter-covered paper crown sat on the dresser from a birthday party two weeks earlier. There were socks on the floor, two books beneath the bed, and a cup of crayons on the windowsill.
Bunny was tucked beneath the blanket.
Maya picked him up.
Then she stood still.
“What?” Ethan asked.
She shook her head.
He waited.
“Is Aunt Rachel going to be mad?”
The question hit him harder than Rachel’s sentence had.
“I don’t know.”
“At me?”
“No.”
He almost added absolutely not.
Instead he said, “Whatever Rachel feels is Rachel’s job.”
Maya rubbed Bunny’s repaired ear between two fingers.
“What about Mom?”
Ethan’s stomach tightened.
“We’re not going to talk about Mom right now unless you want to.”
Maya stared at the floor.
“I don’t.”
“Okay.”
May you like
They went downstairs.
At the urgent-care clinic, a receptionist gave Maya a sticker with a smiling strawberry on it. Maya stuck it to Bunny’s stomach.
