Chapter 6
Ms. Bell led us through a side door of the county office and into a small room with no windows. The walls were painted the color of oatmeal, and a metal table stood beneath a buzzing light. I sat in a plastic chair with Rabbit in my lap while Alessandro remained beside me instead of taking the chair across from Ms. Bell.
The sealed money and the paper fragment rested inside a clear evidence bag. Ms. Bell placed it on the table but did not open it.
“I asked Mr. Calder to meet us here,” she said. “He was the person who accepted the delivery this morning.”
The door opened.
Mr. Calder was an older man with a brown jacket and a county badge clipped to his belt. He kept rubbing one thumb across the edge of his other hand.
“I didn't know I was supposed to be part of anything,” he said.
“You signed for a package at the house,” Ms. Bell replied.
“That doesn't make me part of this.”
“No,” she said. “But it makes your memory important.”
Alessandro's watch caught the light when he folded his arms. “What time did you arrive?”
“Eight forty-five. Maybe closer to nine.”
Ms. Bell glanced at the receipt in her folder. “The delivery log says eight thirty-two.”
Mr. Calder stopped rubbing his hand.
I looked at Alessandro. He hadn't moved, but his eyes had sharpened.
“Maybe the log is wrong,” Mr. Calder said.
“You signed your name beside the time,” Ms. Bell answered.
“I sign a lot of things.”
“Did you see anyone enter the dining room?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone leave it?”
“No.”
She turned one page. “Then why did you tell the house manager that a woman was waiting near the breakfast room?”
Mr. Calder's face changed so quickly I almost missed it. His mouth opened, then closed.
“I didn't say that.”
“You did. Your statement was written at nine fourteen.”
“I meant the front hall.”
“Those are different places.”
The room seemed to shrink around us. Rabbit's ear was bent beneath my fingers, and I smoothed it again and again.
Mr. Calder looked toward me. “I never saw the child.”
“I didn't say you did,” Ms. Bell said.
He looked away.
Alessandro leaned closer to the table. His voice stayed quiet. “Who told you to use the side entrance?”
Mr. Calder's shoulders tightened. “No one told me.”
“Then why did you use it?”
“It was open.”
“That door is usually locked,” Alessandro said.
Mr. Calder stared at him. “You want me blamed because someone put something on bread?”
Alessandro did not answer right away. He looked at the evidence bag, then at me.
“No,” he said. “I want to know who had access to my home and knew what Emma saw.”
Mr. Calder swallowed. “I don't know who she is.”
“You've said you never saw anyone,” Ms. Bell pointed out.
“I heard a voice.”
The buzzing light seemed louder.
“What voice?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can't help you with that.”
“You just did.”
“No. I mean I heard someone speaking in the hall. That's all.”
“What did she say?”
Mr. Calder pressed his lips together.
I knew that pause. It was the same kind of pause the woman had made before telling me grown-ups had secrets.
Alessandro noticed it too.
“Mr. Calder,” he said, “you don't have to identify her. Tell us the words.”
The man looked at me again. “She asked if the delivery had been signed for.”
Ms. Bell wrote it down. “And what did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“Did she come into the dining room?”
“No.”
“Did she know Emma was in the house?”
His eyes flicked toward me.
That was an answer, even before he spoke.
“She asked whether the little girl was awake,” he said.
Alessandro's hand closed slowly at his side.
Ms. Bell stopped writing. “You told us you never saw anyone.”
“I didn't see her face.”
“But you spoke to her.”
“I heard her.”
“And you said she wasn't there,” Ms. Bell said.
Mr. Calder's cheeks reddened. “I didn't want trouble.”
Alessandro turned toward the blank wall. For a moment, I thought he might leave. Instead, he breathed in through his nose and looked back at Ms. Bell.
“This isn't only about what was in the bread,” he said.
The words made my stomach hurt.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He crouched until his eyes were level with mine, but he didn't touch Rabbit or me. “It means someone may have been planning around your fear. The money, the bread, the messages. Maybe the purpose was bigger than getting me to eat one piece of food.”
I held Rabbit tighter. “Because she wanted me quiet?”
“Yes,” he said. “And because she expected the adults around you to believe her instead of you.”
Ms. Bell closed the folder. “That is why we need a fuller record.”
I nodded, but a different memory had already opened inside me.
It was not about the dining room. It was about the hallway after the woman had given me the money. I had never told Alessandro where I put it. I had only said she gave it to me.
The folded bills had not gone into my pocket.
They had gone under Rabbit's left ear.
I looked down at him.
“There's something else,” I said.
Alessandro waited.
I picked at the loose thread near Rabbit's ear. “After she gave me the money, she said I should hide it where nobody would look.”
Ms. Bell's pen was ready.
“And where did you hide it?” she asked.
I looked at Alessandro first.
“Under Rabbit's ear,” I whispered. “Then she told me to put him back on my bed and pretend I hadn't heard anything.”
The silence after that felt different from the silence before. It had a shape. It had a place to go.
Alessandro stood very still.
Ms. Bell wrote the sentence down.
Then someone knocked on the door.
Before Ms. Bell could answer, a phone began ringing in the hallway.
My phone was inside Alessandro's folder.
The ringing stopped.
A second later, his phone lit up.
No name. No number.
He looked at the screen, and this time his face did change.
The woman had tried to call.
May you like
I could see the message beneath it.
Answer me, Emma.
