Chapter 6

Trask Family Dental sat between a tire shop and a Chinese buffet. At five o’clock, the parking lot was almost empty. I waited by Tessa’s car with my hands in my pockets and my breath steaming. She came out in scrubs and a cardigan, sleeves pulled down past her knuckles. She stopped when she saw me.

“You can’t be here,” she said.

“I’m not here to fight.”

She looked past me at the road. Her jaw had a bruise under it, old and yellow at the edges. I had seen that bruise in August. In January. In every season she had lived in that house.

“Why did you text me to come early?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Tessa. Why 3:30?”

Her eyes filled. She blinked it away fast. “Because 4:00 is when he wanted you there.”

I felt the ground shift under me. “He wanted me there?”

“He chose the time,” she said. “He always chose the time.”

“You told me to come early.”

“I told you what I could.”

I stepped closer. She flinched, and I stopped. That flinch told me more than her words. I had spent six chapters hating her for standing still in that doorway. Now I saw her hands folded in her sleeves and knew she had been trying to send me a signal I had been too angry to read.

“You called CPS,” I said. “Twice.”

She looked at me, startled. Then tired. “October. December. They said there was nothing actionable.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because he reads my phone. Because the lease is in his name. Because the car title is in his name. Because he has a video from last spring that I’ve never seen, and he reminds me every week that he hasn’t sent it to anyone. Yet.”

The word yet sat between us.

“What video?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the point.”

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to say you let my son stand barefoot on a step. But I had seen her flinch. I had seen the bruise. I had seen the way she stood with her hands hidden.

“He hides them,” she said.

“Hides what?”

“The recordings. The quiet ones. He hides them.”

Then she walked to her car. She didn’t look back. I let her go.

The next morning, I found a note in Dale’s mailbox. It was folded around a charger cord, no envelope. The handwriting was small and rushed: He hides them. Check quiet time.

I brought Owen’s backpack inside and unzipped it on the kitchen table. Under his spare shirt and a half-eaten granola bar, something hard pressed against the canvas. I pulled out a cracked kid-tablet, the screen webbed in one corner. It was still charged.