“Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would make her change.” Sandy wasn’t sure who she was talking about: Hannah’s mom or Jenna.
“No,” Hannah said softly, picking her pencil up and focusing again on her schoolwork. “My mom will never change.”
“Yikes,” Steve said. When Sandy snapped her eyes down from the pictures, he was pointing toward the scab on her arm. “What happened there?”
Shit. Sandy had let her sleeve ride up. “Oh, I fell off my bike.” She wrinkled her nose like a little kid—you know, “these things happen.” But her heart was pounding. Breathe. Fucking breathe. It’s just a question. One that anybody would ask, not just a cop. “At least my bike’s okay.”
“I don’t know about that.” Steve shook his head. “Bike can be replaced. You can’t. Hope you’re not riding around at night without reflective gear. I’m telling you, there are more bicyclist fatalities that way. Got to be careful out there.”
“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean—” Sandy shook her head, feeling sick. “I have reflectors.”
“Good, good. Okay, now I’m ready here with this system. Spell your mom’s full name for me?” Steve was leaning over his computer again, fingers raised above the keyboard.
“Jenna Mendelson. M-e-n-d-e-l-s-o-n.”
Steve didn’t type. Didn’t move. He stayed frozen like that, hands floating over the keys. Sandy could feel her stomach pushing up. Was Jenna already dead, and Steve knew it? Did the mention of her name click the pieces into place? Slowly he turned to look at Sandy, peeling off his glasses. The friendly-dad look on his face was totally gone. Now there was a full-on cop there. And it was scaring the hell out of her.
“I think maybe we should start again. At the beginning,” he said, staring dead at her. “When exactly was the last time you saw your mother?”
MOLLY
MAY 18, 2013
What I told Dr. Zomer was not the whole truth. I didn’t even tell Justin that. But I think he knew. Of course he did.
I did drop a glass and I did slip and cut my hand a little when I was trying to clean it up. That’s all true. But when I saw the blood on my hand, I didn’t feel upset or worried. I felt relieved. Like the world had been rebalanced.
I don’t even remember picking up the piece of glass that I cut my arm with. But I did. I must have. I do remember being careful not to cause any real damage, in my nonexpert medical opinion. Because I could have if I’d wanted to. I could have done so much more.
And then Ella started to cry—one of her night terrors. And so I ran to her without thinking, because I could do that by then, comfort her after a bad dream. I didn’t realize how much that small cut was already bleeding.
I had Ella in my arms when Justin came home a few minutes later. As soon as he saw us, he started yelling: Where’s she bleeding? Where’s she bleeding? It wasn’t until I looked down that I saw Ella’s head was covered in blood.
A second later, I passed out. Luckily, Justin caught me—and Ella, thank God—as I fell. Next thing I knew, the paramedics were lifting me into the ambulance. Halfway to the hospital, they realized that the cut to my arm wasn’t serious. That I’d passed out not from blood loss but from the sight of it all over my daughter.
Justin lied and told the paramedics that he had been there, seen the whole thing. That it had been an accident, me and the broken glass and my arm. And watching Justin do that for me, lie like his life depended on it, like my life depended on it—and it might have, they could have hospitalized me against my will—I have never loved him more.
And so when he’d insisted the next day that I go see Dr. Zomer, I went. It was the least I could do.
Molly
“I got you a latte,” Stella said when I got to the Black Cat. She was at a table by the window, two coffees already in front of her. “Full-fat milk, of course. Because that’s all they serve in this godforsaken place.” Her nostrils flared. “Honestly, I don’t understand why you like it here.”
“It reminds me of the city,” I said as I sat down across from her, trying not to think of the box of files I’d had Steve leave in our living room. The box that was left by some stranger. A reader, maybe, but an angry one? A happy one? Who was to say? Thinking of it still inside my house filled me with dread. I wasn’t sure that I’d done the right thing, not reporting it as a crime.
I’d gone back inside after Steve left, but only long enough to get Ella dressed and to change out of the yoga pants I’d slept in. I’d deliberately avoided looking at the box. After Ella was safely at school, I’d planned to go home and look inside. Except now I was doing my damnedest to avoid the house. I was so stressed about the whole thing, I was even tempted to tell Stella. But that box was exactly the strange turn of events she lived for. She’d have us rushing back to my house to go through every last page.
“Cockroaches would remind you of the city, too, you know,” Stella went on. “But that doesn’t mean we need to start importing them. Oh, wait, I didn’t tell you, did I?” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Zachary and I are having lunch after my lesson today.”
“Really?” I was relieved to be talking about something silly like Stella’s endless—but largely halfhearted—pursuit of her thirty-one-year-old tennis coach. It gave me an excuse not to ask the questions I had about Rose and her baby and Aidan. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answers.
I startled when my phone buzzed on the table.