Chapter 4 - THE BOY WHO KEPT COUNT
Daniel did not take the notebook from him.
“Do you want me to look?”
Owen nodded.
The first entry had no date.
Lily cried because she wanted the blue cup. Aunt Rachel put it outside.
The next one did.
Tuesday. No dinner for Lily because she didn’t say sorry right.
Daniel’s throat tightened.
There were spelling mistakes. Drawings. A little square with a door and a stick figure inside.
He stopped on that page.
Owen watched his face.
“That’s the laundry room.”
Daniel kept his voice steady.
“Thank you for showing me.”
“She said it wasn’t locked.”
He waited.
“But Lily can’t turn the knob when she’s crying.”
Across the room, his daughter slept with one hand curled around the edge of Owen’s sweatshirt.
Daniel remembered coming home and finding her asleep at the kitchen table.
Rachel had said she fought bedtime.
He remembered Owen asking whether the laundry room needed a lock.
He had said no and gone back to answering a message from work.
Now that forgotten conversation came back sharp enough to make him grip the chair.
“There’s more at home,” Owen said.
“What do you mean?”
“Pages. I tore some out.”
“Where are they?”
His son hesitated.
“Will she see?”
“No. She isn’t going back inside.”
Owen studied him.
For months, adults had said things that sounded safe and then left him alone with Rachel.
Daniel understood that his answer was only a sentence.
It would take more than a sentence to become true.
“I’ll make sure,” he added.
They left the hospital after midnight with instructions, follow-up appointments, and a card from Officer Patel.
Daniel drove to a hotel.
He couldn’t bear to ask the children to sleep in that house yet.
Owen stayed awake the whole ride.
At a red light, he said, “Who’s picking Lily up tomorrow?”
“Nobody. We’re all staying together.”
“What about work?”
“I’ve called my boss.”
“What did he say?”
“That we’ll figure it out.”
Owen looked out the window.
Daniel had expected relief.
Instead, his son whispered, “She said you’d lose your job if we bothered you.”
At the hotel, Daniel put both children in the larger bed and took the chair beside it.
He had just turned off the lamp when his phone chimed.
The front-door camera at home had detected someone.
He opened the image.
May you like
Rachel was standing on his porch.
She was holding her key.
