Chapter 9 - What the Babysitter Saw on the Stairs
I drove Maya home the day after our diner breakfast, and I kept the radio low so I could hear her breathe in the back seat. She'd fallen quiet after the parking lot, swinging her boots against my truck seat, holding the crayon drawing she'd made folded in fourths. The apartment house where my brother lived sat off a side street past the school, brick on the bottom and gray siding on top, salt tracked across the front steps.
Mark's truck wasn't in the lot. That loosened something in my chest I didn't like admitting.
I walked her up to the second floor. Sarah opened the door before I knocked, tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. She took Maya's hand and thanked me, and Maya leaned into my leg for a second before she went inside for her backpack for school the next week. I said I'd wait on the sidewalk to make a call, which wasn't true. I wanted air that didn't smell like someone else's cooking.
Jenna was coming up the walk with grocery bags. I recognized her from Christmas at Mom's two years back, the neighbor's daughter who watched Maya sometimes when Mark and Sarah both picked up shifts. Early twenties, puffy winter coat, earbuds in one ear.
"Hey," I said. "You still sit for Maya sometimes?"
She shifted the bags. "Yeah. Not much lately. Work nights mostly."
I fell in step beside her toward the side entrance. The sidewalk was cracked and iced over near the drainpipe. I could hear a TV through the first-floor window and someone laughing.
"How's she been when you're with her?" I asked. I tried to keep it light. "Christmas season makes her wired, huh?"
Jenna smiled a little. "She's good. She's easy. Colors, plays with her dolls. Doesn't like when it gets loud."
That snagged me. "Loud how?"
She looked toward the apartment house. "I mean, like, you know. Normal stuff. There was one night back in November, I think. I was over there and her dad and mom got into it in the kitchen. Not crazy, just loud. About money and who was supposed to pick her up from preschool. He shut the bedroom door pretty hard so she wouldn't hear."
I kept my hands in my pockets. "Maya was there for that?"
"Yeah, she was on the couch with me. She just went real still. Then she asked if we could play hide-and-seek in the closet." Jenna laughed, but it faded quick. "Kids do that, right? Make a game out of it."
I nodded like I agreed, even though my throat felt tight. "Did she cry?"
"No. She didn't cry. She just didn't want to come out for a while. I sat on the floor outside the closet and kept counting so she'd laugh. She finally came out when it got quiet."
A car passed slow, tires crunching salt. Upstairs, I could see Sarah's kitchen light through the blinds. No silhouette moving.
Jenna went on, unprompted now, like she wanted to get it right. "It's just stress, you know? Everyone on this block yells. Rent went up. My mom and dad yell. Doesn't mean anything."
"I know," I said. "I'm not saying it does. I'm just — she's been clingy with me. Thought I'd check if you'd seen anything different."
She studied me. Snow started, thin flakes that melted when they hit the sidewalk. "She asked to stay longer once," she said after a beat. "Like, my shift was done, her mom came to get her, and Maya grabbed my sleeve and said, can't I stay for one more show? She wasn't upset, exactly. She just didn't want to go yet. I told her mom it was fine, I didn't mind, but her mom said they'd had a long day."
"Which parent picked her up that night?" I asked.
Jenna frowned, thinking. "Her dad, I think. He was waiting downstairs in his truck. He honked. She heard it and let go real fast."
I looked down at the ice by the drainpipe to give her space. I could hear my own breathing.
"Did you ever feel like you should say something?" I asked quietly.
She hugged the grocery bags closer. "Say what? I didn't see anything happen. He never — he never touched her or anything in front of me. He just has a temper when he's tired. Like a lot of guys do."
The words sat there. I didn't correct her. I didn't push the word temper into something bigger than she was ready to carry. I'd been her age once, explaining away things in my own house.
"I get it," I said. "Thanks for telling me straight."
She nodded, relieved to be let off. "Don't tell Sarah I said anything about the fight, okay? I need the work."
"I won't repeat it like that," I said. "I just wanted to know how Maya is when she's not around family."
Jenna started up the side steps, then stopped. "She's sweet. You can tell she likes you. She talks about your truck like it's a spaceship."
I smiled for real that time. "It pretty much is. Needs a new muffler to get to Mars."
Upstairs, the front door opened and Maya appeared at the railing with her backpack half-zipped, Sarah behind her. Maya waved the folded drawing at me.
"Bye, Uncle Caleb," she called.
I raised my hand. "Bye, bug."
May you like
Jenna went inside with her groceries. I stood on the sidewalk a minute longer, watching the kitchen blinds, listening to the snow hiss faintly on the warm hood of a parked car. I had a second set of eyes now. A loud fight, a slammed door, a kid choosing a closet to feel safe, a small hand holding a sleeve so she wouldn't have to go down to a honking truck.
It wasn't proof. I knew that. It was a pattern starting to show its edge, and I couldn't unsee it.
