Chapter 5: What Ellie Saw When The Clock Clicked
Victor had texted at six that he was driving to the county seat to pick up a part for the gate. I didn't believe him, but I checked the front camera on my phone and watched his black SUV pull out past the stone pillars. I watched until the taillights disappeared down the road before I went upstairs.
Ellie's room was warm from the heater and smelled like her strawberry shampoo. She was already in her pajamas, the ones with the little stars, sitting cross-legged on her rug with the drawing I had laid on her small white table. I had not taped it down. I wanted her to hold it if she wanted to.
I sat on the floor across from her so we were at the same level. My chest was tight in that familiar way it gets when I'm trying not to rush.
"You drew this today," I said. "Can you tell me about it?"
She nodded and picked it up. She held it carefully with both hands the way she had at the dining table.
"I drew the clock," she said.
"What did the clock do?" I asked.
She looked at the drawing, then toward her doorway like she was listening for something that wasn't there anymore. "It clicked," she said. "Loud. Like it does for breakfast."
Our kitchen clock was an old analog Howard Miller my dad had hung. It had a hard mechanical click right before it chimed the hour, then a softer chime on the quarter hours. At 8:12 it wouldn't chime, but that pre-click was distinct. I nodded and kept my voice even.
"What happened when it clicked?"
She pointed to the pantry side of her drawing, not the clock. "Mr. Victor was there. By the white doors."
The pantry in the kitchen had white double doors. My pill bottle lived on the second shelf, next to my vitamins, where I could reach it without thinking. I had to breathe through my nose for a second before I could speak again.
"What was he doing by the white doors?" I asked.
Ellie frowned a little, trying to get it right. "He had your bottle. The orange one. And the white top in his other hand."
I remembered the bottle on the dark wood table downstairs, the white cap sitting beside it. I hadn't moved them.
"Did he open it?" I asked.
"Uh-huh," she said. She turned her hand over to show me. "He did like this. And the pills came out in his hand."
My mouth went dry. I kept my hands still on my knees.
"Then what did he do with them?"
She poured an invisible handful from one palm to the other. "He looked at them," she said. "Close to his eyes. Then he put some back. Like this." She mimed tipping her hand back toward an invisible bottle. "And he put something in his pocket."
That detail stopped me cold. I hadn't expected it. "He put something in his pocket?" I asked. "The pills, or something else?"
She screwed up her face. "The pills. He took some and pushed them in his jacket. His black jacket pocket."
I didn't lead her. I didn't say did he take them or did he swap them. I just repeated it back. "He put some pills in his black jacket pocket. And put the rest back in the bottle."
"Yes," she said. "Then he closed it."
I reached for my phone where it sat on the rug. Before Ellie had come upstairs I had called her mom. Maya and I had been divorced two years but we co-parent well enough to do the hard things right. I had asked her to stay on speaker for this so there was another adult hearing it exactly as Ellie said it, not as I remembered it later.
"Maya, you still there?" I said.
"I'm here," Maya's voice said from the phone, soft. "Hi, baby."
"Hi, Mommy," Ellie said.
"Ellie, I am recording this little talk so we remember it right," I said. "Is that okay?"
"Okay," she said. She didn't seem to care about the phone at all.
Maya said, "Ellie, sweetheart, you are doing so good telling Daddy what you saw."
I took a piece of printer paper from her table and a crayon. "Can we make a line together about when it happened?" I asked. I drew a long horizontal line. "This is morning. You were having cereal, right?"
She nodded. "Cheerios."
"And the clock clicked," I said, and made a small mark. I wrote 8:12 under it. "And Mr. Victor was at the pantry. You saw him. Then he smiled at you?"
Her face changed. That was the part that finally made my throat close up.
"He smiled big," she said. "He said shhh. Like a game. He put his finger here." She touched her lips. "So I didn't talk."
I didn't move for a beat. The heater ticked in the corner. I could hear Maya breathing on the phone.
"You thought it was a game?" I asked.
"Yeah," Ellie whispered. "Because he smiled. But it wasn't a fun game."
I reached over and put my hand flat on the rug near her knee, not grabbing her. "You did not do anything wrong," I said. "Not even a little. You saw something important and you drew it so I would know. That was very brave."
She leaned forward and put her head against my shoulder. Her hair was still damp. I hit stop on the recording and saw the timer at 4:22. Maya stayed on the line.
May you like
"I got it all," Maya said quietly. "Daniel, I heard it all."
I closed my eyes and held Ellie against me and listened to the house. No car in the driveway. No footsteps in the hall. Just the heater and Ellie's breathing and the faint tick of her little bunny clock on the dresser, waiting for its own click.
