Chapter 6 - The Man Who Hadn’t Looked
Ethan called before I finished reading the comments.
“Don’t look at it.”
“Too late.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t post it.”
“No. But this is happening because you protected my son.”
I sat on the kitchen floor with the pay stubs spread around me.
“People are saying I dropped him.”
His silence was worse than a swear word.
Then he said, “Oliver’s asleep. My sister is with him. Can I come over?”
An hour later, Ethan sat at my crooked table while I showed him the deductions.
Paul had labeled them STAFF ADVANCE REPAYMENT.
Not theft.
Ethan took photographs with my permission and sent them to Detective Cole.
Then he put his phone facedown.
“I keep trying to remember.”
“What?”
“Every time Vanessa was alone with him.”
I didn’t answer.
“She said she was nervous around babies. I thought that was normal.”
“It can be.”
“She said his crying gave her headaches.”
“That can be true too.”
“She wanted me to send him to stay with my sister for a few weeks. Said I needed sleep.”
He pressed his fingertips into his eyes.
“I almost agreed.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I missed him when I went to work. I couldn’t imagine coming home and him not being there.”
From somewhere outside, a car alarm chirped.
Ethan looked around my apartment, then at my wrist.
“I told you that night you were both safe.”
“You wanted us to be.”
“I should have made sure.”
“You can’t make every bad person disappear.”
“No,” he said. “But I can stop pretending I don’t see them.”
He told me about Oliver’s mother.
Her name was Claire.
She had laughed at her own jokes before finishing them. She bought Christmas presents in July and forgot where she hid them. She died from complications after Oliver was born.
Vanessa had been an old acquaintance who started bringing meals.
“She knew what to do when I couldn’t get out of bed,” he said. “I confused being needed with being understood.”
I thought about my mother’s last months.
“Grief makes simple things look like rescue.”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
His phone rang.
Detective Cole.
He put it on speaker.
“We spoke with the restaurant’s security vendor,” she said. “The local recording was altered, but there’s an off-site archive.”
Ethan sat forward.
“Do they have it?”
“We’ve requested preservation and are obtaining the necessary records.”
“Then we’ll know.”
Cole paused.
“There’s something else. A witness says Vanessa asked about the cameras before dinner.”
My hand tightened around my mother’s mug.
May you like
“How long before?”
“Three days.”
