Chapter 4: What Lily Remembered
The caseworker arrived at eight the next morning.
Her name was Patricia Odom.
She was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain around her neck and a calm that Marcus could tell was not indifference — it was practice.
She had done this many times.
She sat across from Lily at the kitchen table with a small notebook and a box of colored pencils she had brought herself.
"Lily, my name is Patricia.
I'm here because your dad wants to make sure you're okay.
Is that all right with you?"
Lily looked at Marcus.
He nodded.
"Okay," Lily said.
"Can you draw me something while we talk?
Anything you like."
Lily picked up a blue pencil.
Marcus stood in the doorway.
Patricia had asked him to stay visible but not to speak unless Lily addressed him directly.
"Lily," Patricia said, "can you tell me about the chair?"
Lily's pencil stopped for just a moment.
Then it kept moving.
"It's the chair from the dining room," she said.
"Mom moved it to the living room."
"Did she tell you why?"
"She said it was a game."
"Did it feel like a game to you?"
Lily didn't answer right away.
She pressed harder with the pencil.
"Sometimes I thought maybe it was," she said.
"Because Grandma was laughing.
And when people laugh it's supposed to be fun."
"But?"
"But my hands hurt.
And I didn't like the darts in my hair." She touched her hair briefly, just above her ear.
"They pulled when they came off."
Patricia wrote something.
She kept her voice the same.
"Did you ever ask them to stop?"
"Yes."
"What did they say?"
"Mom said I was being too sensitive." Lily looked at her drawing.
"She said it wasn't even real hurting."
Marcus gripped the doorframe.
He did not move.
"Did anyone else ever see the game?" Patricia asked.
"Uncle Danny."
"What did Uncle Danny do when he saw it?"
"He watched.
He had his phone out." Lily paused.
"He said I was funny when I cried."
The pencil kept moving.
Blue lines.
A shape that might have been a house, or a box, or a chair — Marcus couldn't tell.
Patricia let the silence sit for a moment.
"Lily, did your mom or grandma ever tell you not to tell your dad about the game?"
Lily nodded.
"What did they say?"
"They said Dad would be sad.
And that if I told him, the game would have to stop and then Grandma would have to go home and she wouldn't visit anymore." Lily looked up.
"I didn't want Grandma to go home.
I thought she loved me."
Her voice didn't break.
She said it the way a child says something they have been carrying for a long time — not with tears, but with a kind of exhausted certainty.
Marcus stepped out of the doorway and walked to the back of the house.
He stood in the small laundry room with the door half closed and pressed his fist against the wall.
He stayed there for two minutes.
Then he washed his face at the utility sink, dried it on a clean towel, and walked back.
Lily was still drawing.
Patricia looked at him briefly.
Just a look.
But it said: she's stronger than you think.
Hold yourself together for her.
He sat down at the table beside his daughter.
"Dad," Lily said without looking up, "are you sad?"
"Yes," he said.
"But not at you.
Never at you."
She slid her drawing across the table toward him.
It was a picture of the two of them.
Him and Lily.
Standing outside.
No house behind them.
No other figures.
Just the two of them, and above them, a sun.
He picked it up carefully with both hands.
Patricia closed her notebook.
"Mr.
Cole," she said quietly, "I'll need to speak with you privately after this.
There are some things I found in the case file this morning that you should know about before your brother's interview this afternoon."
Marcus looked at her.
"What things?"
May you like
"The videos weren't only sent to your brother's number," she said.
"There were two other recipients."
