Chapter 5 - The Picture Book Drawing
The picture book was still open on the bed when the morning light came in.
I'd left it there on purpose. The camera I'd mounted the night before was tucked behind the closet trim, its little red dot covered with tape, the glass of water sealed in a bag in the laundry room freezer where Lily wouldn't find it. But the book had been part of the scene and I didn't want to move anything she'd touched until I could look at it properly in daylight.
Lily was downstairs eating cereal in her pink dress, her bunny on the chair beside her. She seemed calmer with the sun up, humming a little under her breath. I sat on the edge of the satin bedding and pulled the book into my lap.
It was a cheap paperback, big colorful animals on each page. Bears and rabbits. On the last page she'd been looking at, someone had drawn over it with crayon.
Not scribble. A shape.
In the middle of the page, over the printed illustration, she'd drawn a tall rectangle with two little brass-colored dots for handles. The double doors. Next to it, a smaller rectangle on what was clearly the nightstand, and inside that, a glass with little black dots floating at the top. Above the glass, just a quick stick figure of a man, no face, just hair and shoulders.
My throat went dry. I traced the dots in the glass with my fingertip. She'd pressed hard enough to leave an indent.
"Lily?" I called, trying to keep my voice even. "Can you come up here for a second, honey?"
She came up the stairs holding her bunny by one ear, milk on her upper lip. I patted the bed beside me.
"Did you draw this?" I asked.
She climbed up and looked at the page. She didn't answer right away, just nodded, her pink bows bobbing. Her hand found the sleeve of my shirt and held on.
"Tell me about it," I said. "In your own words."
She pointed with a small finger. "That's your water," she said. "He puts the dots in it."
"When does he come?"
She thought about it, her brow furrowing the way it did when she was trying to be accurate. "After story time," she said. "When the lamp goes click." She mimed turning the crystal lamp base off on the nightstand. "When it's dark."
I swallowed. "Does he come every night?"
She shook her head hard. "No. Only when Mom is not home."
The way she said it was so matter-of-fact it hit harder than if she'd been crying. Not home. That was our arrangement for the last month. Her mom had been staying at her sister's two nights a week for work, Tuesday and Thursday. I'd told myself it was good Lily was getting used to it.
I pulled her onto my lap and held her there for a minute, breathing with her, my stubble brushing her hair. I didn't want to ask anything that would lead her. I just let her look at her drawing.
"Thank you for showing me," I said finally. "This helps me a lot."
She leaned back against my chest and whispered, "Are you gonna make him stop?"
"Yes," I said. "I am."
Downstairs, after I got her set up with crayons at the kitchen table, I pulled the wall calendar off the fridge. It was one of those big county feed-store calendars with the squares you write in. My wife's handwriting in blue, mine in black.
I flipped back through the last three weeks. I could see her "at Sarah's" written on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And in my own handwriting, on almost those exact same nights, I'd written "refill - PM meds" and "took late dose."
My prescription. The sleep aid my doctor had given me after the remodeling stress. I was supposed to take it at nine. But on the nights she was gone, I'd been up later with Lily, doing the whole bedtime routine alone, and I'd taken it closer to ten, sometimes ten-thirty. Right before lights out.
I stood there with the calendar in my hands and the kitchen light buzzing overhead. The pattern was right there in ink. The nights the lamp went click and the water sat on the nightstand. The nights I went out cold and didn't wake up until morning, groggy and heavy-headed. The nights Lily saw someone at the doors.
It wasn't random. Whoever it was knew when I'd be deepest asleep. And Lily was the only one awake to see it.
I put the calendar back exactly how it was and looked over at Lily at the table. She was drawing again, tongue out in concentration. Another glass, another set of doors. Dating it, in her way, by doing it in daylight.
I took a photo of her first drawing with my phone, careful to get the whole page, the dots, the doors, the little man. Evidence, but also a record of what she'd seen without me having to make her say it twice.
May you like
I didn't turn the camera on in her room yet. I told myself we had time to do this right.
The house was quiet except for her crayon scratching. For the first time since she'd whispered in the dark, I felt like I had something solid that wasn't just my word against a feeling. I had her drawing, I had the calendar, I had the window. All I needed now was to figure out who knew that window as well as we did.
