Chapter 11
We didn't go back to the house.
Alessandro drove three blocks past the pharmacy, turned into a gas station, and waited beneath the bright canopy while Ms. Bell called places from the passenger seat. I sat behind Alessandro with Rabbit on my lap. Every dark car that passed made me look up.
Ms. Bell finally lowered her phone. “The community center has a family room we can use until tonight. People will be around.”
“Who knows we're going there?” Alessandro asked.
“The director and me.”
He watched her for a second. “Tell the director not to use Emma's name.”
Ms. Bell nodded.
At the community center, glass doors opened into a lobby that smelled like floor cleaner and coffee. A basketball bounced somewhere beyond the walls. Two moms sat near the front desk while their children colored at a low table.
I liked that everyone could see everyone else.
The director, Mrs. Vega, gave me a box of crayons and showed us a room beside the lobby. It had a couch, a table, and a wide interior window. The door stayed open.
“You can close it if the noise bothers you,” she said.
“No,” I said too quickly.
Mrs. Vega looked at Alessandro.
“Open is better,” he told her.
She didn't ask why.
Alessandro crouched beside my chair. He kept his hands on his own knees. “Ms. Bell and I need to make two calls in the lobby. You can see us through the window. Mrs. Vega will stay at the desk.”
“You won't leave?”
“No.”
I watched him walk only as far as the other side of the glass.
For a while, I colored Rabbit blue because the brown crayon had broken. I could hear the basketball and the soft sound of Alessandro's voice, but not his words.
Then a woman wearing a plastic name badge stopped in the doorway.
“I need Emma for a minute,” she told Mrs. Vega.
Mrs. Vega looked up from the front desk. “Who sent you?”
“Mr. Romano. There’s a quieter office down the hall.”
The woman smiled at me. I had never seen her before.
My crayon stopped moving.
Alessandro was still visible through the glass. His phone was at his ear. His back was partly turned, but he hadn't left the lobby.
The woman pointed down the hall. One of the doors there stood open. A light was on inside, though I couldn't see anyone.
“He said to bring your rabbit,” she told me.
My fingers closed around Rabbit's left ear.
The woman from the house had looked at Rabbit before she looked at me. She had hidden the money beneath that same ear. Maybe this woman knew nothing about it. Maybe she had only been told what to say.
But Alessandro had promised I wouldn't be alone.
I stayed in my chair. “He can come get me.”
The woman glanced through the window. “He's busy, sweetheart.”
Mrs. Vega rose from behind the desk. “What's your name?”
“Dana. I help with the afternoon program.”
Mrs. Vega's face changed just a little. Her mouth stayed friendly, but her eyes didn't. “The afternoon program isn't here on Thursdays.”
The woman touched her badge. It had turned backward, hiding the writing.
I stood, but I moved toward the glass instead of the hallway. “Alessandro.”
He turned at once.
The woman stepped back. “There's been a misunderstanding.”
Alessandro entered the room and placed himself between us. He didn't grab her or raise his voice.
“Who asked you to take Emma?” he said.
“I told you, I thought—”
“Who?”
She looked toward the front doors.
Ms. Bell was already there, blocking them without seeming to. “Please stay until we clarify this.”
The woman shook her head. “I'm not staying anywhere. I didn't do anything.”
She hurried past Ms. Bell and pushed through the glass doors. Mrs. Vega reached for the phone at the desk while Alessandro stayed beside me.
Outside, a dark car rolled from the far end of the parking lot.
It wasn't close enough for me to see the driver. I saw the back of it as it turned onto the road.
Alessandro checked the plate number against what he'd written earlier.
“It matches,” he said.
Ms. Bell went still. “The car from the laboratory?”
He nodded.
Mrs. Vega spoke into the phone, giving the direction the car had gone. Then she pulled up the security camera on the desk computer. The screen showed the woman entering through a side entrance less than four minutes earlier. Someone had left that door propped open with a rubber wedge.
“She wasn't signed in,” Mrs. Vega said.
On another camera, the dark car waited beside the curb while the woman crossed the lot alone. The picture wasn't clear enough to show who sat behind the wheel.
Ms. Bell saved the video.
Alessandro turned to me. “How did you know not to go?”
I rubbed Rabbit's ear between my fingers. I felt ashamed because part of me had almost obeyed. Adults usually expected children to move when they pointed.
“She said you sent her,” I told him. “But you said you wouldn't leave me alone.”
His eyes lowered for one quiet second. “That's right.”
“And she knew about Rabbit.”
Ms. Bell looked at the security screen again. “That wasn't random.”
The open office down the hall had no one inside. Its second door led to a service corridor and the side exit.
Mrs. Vega removed the rubber wedge and locked the outside door.
Alessandro didn't ask me to explain anything else. He pulled a chair beside mine, close enough that our sleeves almost touched, and waited while Ms. Bell gathered the video and names of everyone in the lobby.
Before we left, Mrs. Vega printed a still image of the woman with the backward badge.
Ms. Bell slipped it into a folder. “We can't keep handling this privately.”
Alessandro looked through the glass doors at the parking lot.
“No,” he said. “We can't.”
I held Rabbit against my cardigan and looked at the office door that had been left open for me.
May you like
I had not gone through it.
That was the first part of the story I knew I could prove without anyone speaking for me.
