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She tried to avoid going up the stairs ahead of them. She always felt so exposed and vulnerable going up a staircase with a man behind her. But they wanted her to have the first look at things, so her legs traveled level with their eyes as they climbed. A pit hollowed her stomach when she remembered they’d seen it all before, could look right through her clothes to their memories.
The attic dust she’d been sure would hold footprints, helpful evidence, was widely scuffed.
“From our guys again.” The sergeant shrugged. “The priority was looking for the kids. Making sure they were safe. And making sure there was no intruder in the house.”
She didn’t dare ask for an apology, didn’t dare accuse them of incompetence.
You told him exactly where the kids were.
Upstairs, little things crawled out sneakily, only barely catching her eye. Changes so tiny she nearly missed them. Every time she pointed out damage to a rug, a floor, they said, “That was us, that was our guys.” The unapologetic tone, the dismissal of all their destruction, made fire burn in her throat. She clamped her lips together tight to suffocate her temper.
The first change she saw was in the kids’ bathroom.
“This toilet seat is up,” she told the officers.
“So?”
“So? There are no men living here.”
“Well, there’s your little boy.” The sergeant sounded concerned, like she might have forgotten her son’s existence.
“He sits down or else he makes a mess. Because he’s still so little.”
“I have a young son, ma’am. A long time ago I was a little boy myself. And I can tell you no little boy in the world always sits down,every time, no matter what he tells his mother.” The sergeant and the boyish officer nodded to each other, eyes giving away the knowing smiles hidden under their masks.
“Well, my son sits.”
“Mmm.” The sergeant hummed. “I’ll make a note of it.”
But instead he stared at her, not writing anything, as if daring her to call him on it. She breathed through her nose and counted down from ten.
Her daughter’s room held the most notable changes. A piggy bank was on the floor when it was usually on the dresser. And things were missing.
The officers exchanged looks as they wrote down a list of the absent items as if to say, “This doesn’t seem like anything at all, I’m sure these things are just misplaced, but I’ll write it down because she’s watching us.”
A T-shirt from YMCA camp, red. Teddy bear, six inches tall, red bow around its neck. Days of the week underwear, Monday and Thursday. One pair ballet tights. The small tin box shaped like race car, red, approximately six by four by two inches, contents assorted marbles, barrettes, pebbles.
She steadied herself on a dresser. The seasick taste of acrid bile crept through her throat and into her mouth as she thought of why he’d chosen these things, pictured the soft fabric of those tights, the polka-dotted cotton with the cursive “Monday” and “Thursday” hanging limp in the Corner’s immense hand.
“We’ll look at the list of what your daughter packed. She may have taken these things to her grandpa’s. Or they could be in the laundry bin or something.”
She tried to blink away the image of the Corner’s flat thumb rubbing that fabric, the tin box the little girl filled with her most valued things.
She swallowed down her nausea. “You don’t understand. My daughter loves that box. You know how kids do, saving little things? Erasers, special rocks? She wouldn’t have lost that. And she never takes it with her anywhere. It belongs here.”
“Right. We’ll check.”
The charger cord snaking across her bedroom nightstand reminded her to ask when she’d get her phone back.
“Today, when we’re done here,” the sergeant said, as if she were a teenager who had to earn phone privileges.
“Where did you find the phone?”
“The far side of that table there.”
“But that’s not where it goes. That side is—was—my husband’s side of the bed. That’s his charger.”
“You’re sure? Sure you didn’t happen to plug it in there?”
