Chapter 4: What Karen Had Been Carrying
We left the restaurant before dessert.
Daniel carried Mia to the car.
She fell asleep against his shoulder before he'd buckled her in.
I stood on the sidewalk and watched through the car window until her breathing slowed and her hands went loose.
Karen appeared beside me.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
I didn't answer.
I waited.
"This isn't the first time." She kept her voice low, eyes forward.
"Last Easter.
You and Daniel were at your sister's.
Mom offered to take Mia for the afternoon.
I stopped by her house around two o'clock to drop off a casserole dish." She paused.
"Mia was in the backyard.
Alone.
The gate was unlatched.
Mom was inside watching television."
I turned to look at her.
"I told myself it was an accident," Karen said.
"I told myself Mom had just stepped inside for a minute.
I didn't say anything because I didn't want to start something." She finally looked at me.
"I'm sorry.
I should have told you."
"How long has she been doing this?"
Karen's mouth pressed together.
"I think it started after you and Daniel got married."
"Why?"
"Because Mia looks like your mother.
Not Daniel's side.
Yours." She said it carefully, like she'd been holding it for a long time.
"And Mom has never once, in six years, called Mia by her name without being prompted first."
I thought about every family dinner.
Every birthday.
Every Christmas morning.
The way Patricia handed gifts to Tyler and Bryce and Emma and then paused, just slightly, before handing one to Mia.
The pause I had always told myself I was imagining.
"She calls her 'the little one,'" I said.
"I know."
"She has a name."
"I know," Karen said again.
Daniel came around the car.
He looked at his sister, then at me.
"What's going on?"
Karen told him.
All of it.
The Easter afternoon, the unlatched gate, the television.
She told him without softening it, without the apology she'd given me first.
She just said what she had seen.
Daniel leaned against the car and put his face in his hands.
"She does this when you're not watching," Karen said.
"That's the part that scares me.
She's careful about when."
"She knew I was coming to the mall today," I said.
"She knew I'd be at the restaurant by six.
She had a five-hour window and she used it."
"That's not an accident," Karen said.
"That's a plan."
Daniel lifted his head.
His eyes were red.
"I need to call her."
"No," I said.
He looked at me.
"Not tonight," I said.
"Tonight I need you to be Mia's father.
Everything else can wait until morning."
He nodded slowly.
He opened the back door and looked at Mia sleeping across the seat, her cheek pressed against the jacket I'd wrapped around her in the garage.
"She didn't cry," he said quietly.
"When you found her.
You said she didn't cry."
"She was afraid of getting in trouble for moving."
He closed his eyes.
"She was more afraid of your mother's rules than she was of being alone in the dark." I said it gently.
I didn't want it to be a weapon.
I just needed him to understand what we were actually dealing with.
He reached in and tucked the jacket more firmly around her shoulders.
We drove home without speaking.
Mia slept the whole way.
I put her to bed while Daniel sat at the kitchen table.
When I came back downstairs, he had his phone in his hand but hadn't made a call.
"She's going to say I'm overreacting," he said.
"She already did," I said.
"At the table.
In front of everyone."
He set the phone down.
"What do you want to do?"
I sat across from him.
"I want to know if you believe Mia."
He looked up.
"Not me," I said.
"Mia.
Do you believe what she told you?"
"Yes," he said.
Without hesitating.
"Then we start there."
He nodded.
May you like
But before either of us could say another word, his phone lit up on the table between us.
The name on the screen was Patricia.
