Chapter 7
The key was still in the little plastic cup on the counter when Mara asked me what it opened.
I hadn't touched it since Elena had shown it to me with the forceps. It sat there catching the clinic light, that round circle on top that made it look old-fashioned, like something from a dollhouse. Nobody had moved it because Elena said it needed to stay where it was for the chain of custody. I kept staring at it because I didn't want to look at the door.
Elena was sitting on the stool now, not on the exam table with me. Mara had pulled another chair close. The caseworker, a woman named Ms. Alvarez who'd come in about twenty minutes earlier, knelt down so her eyes were lower than mine. She hadn't asked me to take my shirt off or looked at my cheek with the light. She just said her job was to help figure out what happened next and that I would not be going anywhere I didn't feel safe.
I could hear my dad's voice once through the wall, low and tight, talking to the deputy outside. Then it went quiet again.
Ms. Alvarez set a blank piece of printer paper on the exam table and slid a box of crayons toward me. Not the little four-pack. The big one.
"Can you show me where this key belongs?" she asked. "You don't have to use words if you don't want to."
My hand was shaking. I picked the brass-colored crayon, even though it wasn't really the right color. I drew the circle first. It came out wobbly. Then the little straight part and the teeth at the bottom. I pressed too hard and the tip snapped.
"It doesn't go to the outside," I said. My voice was small. "We rent the farmhouse out on County Road H. The white one with the peeling porch. Upstairs, at the end of the hall, there's a closet. But it's not a closet. Dad put a real lock on it. Like an apartment door lock. With a deadbolt."
Elena glanced at Mara, but she didn't interrupt me.
"He said it was storage and to keep out," I said. "He said I'd get in trouble if I touched the door. That's where it goes. I know because I saw him use it."
Ms. Alvarez nodded slowly. "Thank you for telling us that. That helps us a lot. Can you tell me what the lock looks like? So we can find it without you having to go inside?"
I closed my eyes for a second and pictured it. The hallway was always dark, even in the afternoon, because the one window was painted shut. The door was white like the other doors, but this one had a silver circle in the middle, scratched up, and a keyhole underneath.
"It's at the very back," I said. "Past my room. The lock is silver. And it clicks loud when it turns."
She wrote exactly what I said on her notepad. Word for word. She read it back and asked if that was right. I said yes.
Later, Mara stepped out to call my grandma while Elena stayed with me. I could hear Mara's side through the crack in the door. "Yes, she's with us at the clinic... No, she's safe right now... Can she stay with you tonight?" When she came back in, she was smiling a little for the first time that afternoon.
"Grandma says her apartment is ready for you," she said. "She's making up the couch with your favorite blanket."
My chest loosened. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath.
Ms. Alvarez explained the plan next, and she explained it to me first, not to the adults over my head. They wanted to check if the key fit that lock, because if it did, that would show I was telling the truth about where I'd been. But I would not go inside the house. Not at all. A deputy would go with my dad and make sure he stayed outside on the porch while another person tried the lock. I could stay in the car with Mara and grandma, or I could stay at grandma's apartment and not go at all. She asked what I wanted.
"I don't want to go inside," I whispered.
"You don't have to," she said right away. "We'll do the supervised retrieval tomorrow morning. Tonight you go to your grandma's. Your dad will have a no-contact order until we check everything. That means he can't call or come by."
I looked down at my drawing, at that wobbly brass key. For the first time, it felt less like something I was hiding and more like something that was proving I wasn't making this up.
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Through the small window in the exam room door, I saw the deputy walk my dad down the hall toward the exit, not back toward me. Dad didn't turn around. The door clicked shut behind them, and the hallway stayed dim and empty.
We left through a different door, the side one that led straight to the parking lot where grandma's old blue car was already waiting, its headlights on against the dark.
