Chapter 6: Everything She Had Been Carrying
They took Richard's statement in the foyer.
They took mine in the kitchen.
A third officer went upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door, and I heard Meredith's voice, and then a long silence, and then the sound of Chloe asking a question I couldn't make out from below.
A woman arrived forty minutes later.
Plain clothes, a lanyard, a soft voice.
A child advocacy specialist from the county.
Her name was Patricia Osei.
She had a canvas bag over one shoulder and she asked me, before she went upstairs, whether Chloe had eaten anything.
"She hasn't," I said.
Patricia nodded.
She pulled a small wrapped granola bar from her bag and held it up.
"Does she like chocolate chip?"
"She does."
"Good." She looked at me steadily.
"I'm going to sit with her for a while.
You don't need to be in the room.
In fact, it's better if you're not."
"I understand."
"Mr.
Vance." She paused with one hand on the stair rail.
"You did the right thing tonight.
I want you to know that, because the next few weeks are going to be hard and there will be moments when someone tries to make you doubt it."
She went upstairs.
I sat at the kitchen table.
Gerald was still there, across from me, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee I didn't remember making.
The envelope was on the table between us, open now, its contents spread out and photographed by the officers.
"The teacher," I said.
"Twelve years ago.
Do you know her name?"
Gerald looked at the table.
"Sandra Pruitt.
She taught third grade at Harwick."
"Is she still in the state?"
"I don't know."
"Find out."
He nodded.
"The other men in that envelope," I said.
"Dennis Aldren.
Who is the fourth?"
Gerald was quiet for a moment.
"A man named Paul Whitmore.
He's a pediatric consultant.
He's provided expert testimony in three child custody cases in this county in the past eight years."
I stared at him.
"He testified on behalf of parents seeking custody," Gerald said.
"In cases where the other parent had made allegations of @buse."
The weight of that landed slowly, the way very heavy things do.
"He helped them get access," I said.
"That's what I believe, yes."
Upstairs, I could hear Chloe's voice.
I couldn't make out the words, but the rhythm of it was different from the silence she'd been carrying all evening.
Steadier.
Like something that had been held underwater was finally allowed to surface.
Meredith appeared in the kitchen doorway.
She looked at me across the room.
Her eyes were swollen.
She was holding herself the way people hold themselves when they are afraid that if they let go, something will fall apart that cannot be put back together.
"She talked to me," Meredith said.
"Upstairs.
Before the woman came." Her voice was barely there.
"She said she tried to tell me in March.
She said she came into the bathroom while I was getting ready and she started to pull up her shirt and I told her we were running late and I'd look later."
I didn't say anything.
"I don't remember it," Meredith said.
"I don't remember her doing that.
And I don't know if that's worse — that I forgot, or that I was so — that I had made myself so—" She stopped.
"I had made myself so good at not seeing things that I couldn't see her."
"Meredith."
"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," she said quickly.
"I'm not asking you for anything.
I just needed to say it out loud to someone.
Because I've been saying it inside my head for the last hour and it keeps getting louder."
I looked at her for a long time.
"She's going to need you," I said finally.
"Not the version of you that was afraid of your father.
The version that sat upstairs with her just now."
Meredith pressed her hand over her mouth.
"Can you be that?" I said.
She nodded.
Once.
Hard.
"Then that's where we start," I said.
From upstairs, Chloe laughed.
It was small.
Surprised.
Like she hadn't expected it to come out.
May you like
Meredith and I both went still and listened to it.
It was the most important sound I had ever heard.
