Chapter 5 - What She Saw Before Dinner
I carried her down the back hall with her legs wrapped tight around my waist and her cheek pressed into my shoulder. She was getting too big for me to carry like that, but I didn't put her down. The dining room felt a long way behind us by then, the candlelight and voices thinning out as we turned past the laundry door into the cooler air of the staff wing.
My room was small enough that the door almost brushed the foot of the bed when it opened. Twin bed, white blanket tucked hard at the corners, a lamp with a crooked shade. Lily's folded pajamas on the pillow. The utility area was right across, with the washer humming and the smell of bleach and warm cotton.
I set her on the edge of the bed. Her pink lace dress rode up a little and she tugged it back down over her knees. Her white socks were gray at the soles from the hallway floor. Her curls had gone damp at her forehead.
"Hey," I said, and kept my voice low. "Breathe with me a second, okay?"
She nodded and tried. Her breath hitched on the inhale.
I crouched so my eyes were level with hers. My apron brushed the floor. Under the kitchen lights my black dress had looked plain, but in here the white collar stood out too bright against my skin. I untied my apron just enough to breathe easier and took both her hands. They were cold.
"You're safe," I said. "Nobody's mad at you in this room."
She looked at the door like she expected it to open. I reached back without looking and pushed it shut. The latch clicked.
"Did I do bad?" she whispered. "At the table?"
I shook my head. "You didn't do bad."
Her lower lip trembled, and I wiped her cheeks with my thumbs before the tears could really start. I got a washcloth from the sink in the utility nook, ran it warm, wrung it out, and pressed it to her face the way I had since she was a baby. Warm cloth, then cold air. She leaned into it.
"Want to change?" I asked.
She nodded. I helped her out of the pink dress carefully so I wouldn't snag the lace, hung it on the back of the chair by its little bow, and smoothed it flat. She stepped into her pajamas, the soft gray set with the frayed cuff, and I pulled the shirt down over her belly. Same routine as every night. That helped both of us.
When she sat back down, she pulled her feet up under her and picked at a loose thread on the blanket.
I sat beside her, close but not crowding. The washer thumped into its spin cycle across the hall.
"Lily," I said. "Can I ask you something? Just you and me. Not what anybody at the table said. Just what your eyes saw."
She stared at the thread.
"You know how we do it at the diner when we see a dog?" I said. "You tell me color, size, where it was. Only what you saw."
That got a small nod. She'd done that game a hundred times on our walk to the bus stop at my sister's apartment.
"I was by the stairs," she said quietly. "You told me stay where the blue light is."
"You did good," I said. "You stayed there?"
"Uh-huh. By the curtain place. I was counting the shiny things on the wall."
The sconces. I nodded.
"Then what?"
She glanced up at me, then away. "The door up there made a sound."
"Which door?"
"The one that's always shut," she said. "With the clicker thing. It went... ehh." She made a soft beep in her throat and pressed an invisible button with her thumb.
My stomach tightened, but I kept my hands still in my lap.
"Did you go inside it?" I asked.
She shook her head fast. "No. I didn't go in. You said never go in."
"That's right," I said. "You didn't touch the door?"
"No."
"Okay. What did you see?"
She pressed her palms together. "She came out."
"Who came out, baby? Tell me what you saw."
"The lady in the black dress," she said. "Her hair was back. She came out and shut it fast. Like this." She mimed pulling a door closed with both hands.
I swallowed. "Then what did she have?"
Lily frowned, trying to find the word. "A card. Like the one for the hotel when we stayed with Auntie? Flat. White-ish."
"A key card," I said before I could stop myself, and then caught it. "Sorry. Go on. You saw something flat in her hand?"
She nodded. "She looked around. Then she put it..." She patted her side, near her hip. "In her shiny pocketbook. She pushed it down in."
"Purse," I said quietly. "Her little purse."
"Yeah. Then she walked down fast."
I let a beat pass while the dryer buzzed next door. I didn't want to feed her the next line.
"Did you take anything?" I asked. "Any card, any key, anything from the hall or the stairs? I need you to tell me true so I can keep you safe."
"No," she said, and looked right at me. "I didn't take nothing, Mommy. I just watched."
I believed her. Her hands were empty when she came into the dining room. Her dress didn't even have pockets.
I pulled her into my lap then, even though she was heavy, and held the back of her head. Her curls smelled like shampoo and candle smoke. Her breathing slowed against my collar.
"Thank you for telling me straight," I said into her hair.
We sat there while the washer stopped and the house settled into that low nighttime creak. Somewhere far off a glass clinked. A chair moved. Laughter that didn't sound like laughing.
What I had was this: she had been where I told her to stay, in the blue light by the curtains. She had heard a door she knew was always shut. She had seen Selene come out and close it and slide something flat into the clutch she carried at her side. She had not gone in. She had not taken anything.
What I didn't have was what kind of card it was, or what room that really was, or why Selene had been inside. A five-year-old's hotel card could be anything. And anything I said upstairs without proof would land on Lily first and on me second.
I eased her back and looked at her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and tired.
"Here's what we're going to do," I said. "You're going to stay with me tonight. And I'm going to remember exactly what you told me. The stairs. The sound. The card going into the purse. I'm going to watch and remember, and I'm not going to guess out loud. Okay?"
"Are you going to tell him?" she whispered.
I thought about Mr. Balanki at the head of the table, his hand steady on that white chair, the gold of his watch catching the candlelight when he leaned toward her.
"Not tonight," I said. "Tonight you sleep."
May you like
She nodded and crawled under the blanket without me having to ask. I tucked it around her shoulders and sat on the edge until her blinking got slow. In the utility nook the dryer clicked as it cooled.
I wasn't going to accuse anyone. I couldn't afford to be wrong, and I couldn't afford to be right without proof. But I would remember the details exactly as she gave them, and I would watch from now on with both eyes open.
