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“I have a PC, why?”
“It’s just… well, the file name here says Mac-K-0404, so I thought maybe we could view it on your…uh, everything alright, Miss Jones? You’re pale. You look like you’re about to faint.” She looks briefly at her partner. “Grab her a glass of water from the kitchen.”
Mack. 04/04.
My birthday is April fourth.
“He went into her bedroom,” Bailey says again, more insistent this time. More desperate to be heard. He rambles a few more jittery inane facts, but he’s not letting this drop. “He went into her bedroom.”
Horror slams into me as I register Bailey’s words, and while I know he’s spoken these exact words to me many times before, it suddenly feels like I’m hearing them for the very first time.
I turn slowly on the couch, trying to remain calm, but my thoughts are already racing ahead of me. I need to make this really easy for him, very clear. “Who are you talking about, Bailey?”
“Jonathan.”
I nod slowly. That much I know for sure. “Whose bedroom did he go into, Bailey?”
“Yours.”
I gasp. “When?”
“Three months, two days. He came by. After school. I was home. You were not home. Door was locked.”
“You let him in?”
He shakes his head vigorously. “Alicia Keys, born 1981. Singer. Actress. Zodiac sign is Aquarius.”
“Jonathan used a key to get in?”
“Yes,” he whispers, nodding. He looks troubled.
“You’re not in trouble, Bailey. You did nothing wrong. Did Jonathan know you were home?”
“No. I was in my room. Jonathan called out to me, but I’m mad at Jonathan. I did not answer him. I hid in my closet because Jonathan doesn’t deserve us.”
“And when he thought you weren’t home, he went upstairs? He went into my bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Was he in there long?”
“Nine minutes, eighteen seconds.”
Detective Ginsburg exhales so loudly it makes Bailey and I both turn to look at him. “That sounds like just long enough to plant a recording device. I think you and I better have a little chat about this Jonathan character, young man. Think you can do that for me?”
Bailey sits up a little straighter. He links his fingers together and rests them calmly in his lap, and then he nods. “Jonathan is a dick.”
Sienna
One month later…
The clock in the kitchen is grating on my nerves. It’s loud. Relentless. Alright, clock I get it. Time keeps moving forward whether you want it to or not.
Real subtle.
I’ve noticed that happen more and more as I’ve gotten older, that time moves much faster than it did when I was a kid.
The last month, not so much.
