Chapter 3: The Girl in the Back Seat
Cho led Diane and Veronica through a side door, away from the relatives gathering in the chapel hall. Behind them, Christopher’s voice rose, polished and wounded, telling anyone who would listen that Diane had always been unstable.
“Don’t look back,” Cho said.
“I’m not,” Diane replied.
But she could feel Veronica watching the door they’d left behind. The girl’s fingers were cold in hers.
At the curb, Cho paused beside the car. “I’ll have an officer check your house. Until then, don’t let anyone in you weren’t expecting.”
“Christopher knows where we live,” Diane said.
“I know. That’s why I want you to go straight there. I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
Christopher appeared in the chapel doorway, flanked by two relatives. He didn’t call out. He only looked at Veronica, his expression softening into the familiar, practiced sorrow.
Veronica tucked herself behind Diane.
Diane opened the passenger door and helped her in. When she glanced back, Christopher was still watching.
The drive home passed beneath a sky the color of dirty wool. Diane kept checking the rearview mirror, though she knew what she’d see: empty road, bare trees, the gray shapes of cars behind them. Veronica sat rigid in the back, her small hands wrapped around the strap of her backpack.
“Did Mommy tell you what the proof was?” Diane asked gently.
Veronica shook her head. “She said to look lower.”
“I know.”
“She was trying to help us.”
Diane tightened her grip on the wheel. There were questions she wanted to ask—how Veronica knew, what she’d heard, whether the voice had come in a dream. Each one felt like a hand reaching for something fragile.
Instead, she said, “You did help us.”
Veronica leaned forward between the seats. “Mommy hid something else. A little key.”
Diane glanced at her in the mirror. “Where?”
“In my school keepsake box. There’s a flower pressed flat between two pages. Mommy said not to lose it.” Veronica swallowed. “She said it was important, even if I forgot why.”
“What kind of flower?”
“A tiny purple one. I brought it home once, and Mommy put it in the box.”
Diane tried to place the memory. Bertha had always saved little things Veronica collected—feathers, ticket stubs, a crooked paper crown from a school play. “Do you remember what the key opens?”
“No.” Veronica looked down. “Maybe Mommy didn’t tell me.”
At Diane’s house, the rooms felt too quiet after the chapel. She locked the front door and drew the curtains before letting Veronica out of her coat. Cho called to say an officer was delayed at the clinic, but she would come as soon as she could. Diane checked the back door twice.
“Stay where I can see you,” she told Veronica.
“I’m going to get my box.”
“Bring it to the kitchen.”
Veronica hurried down the hall. Diane took Bertha’s old nurse bag from the coat closet, intending to look through it for anything that might belong to her daughter. She had barely set it on the kitchen table when a sharp crack came from the back of the house.
Veronica screamed.
Diane moved before she had time to think. She ran to the hall and pulled Veronica behind her, then heard footsteps thudding across the kitchen.
A figure burst through the back doorway, a dark shape against the window’s jagged glitter. Diane shoved Veronica into the nearest room and lunged for the kitchen phone. The intruder snatched up the nurse bag, saw Diane, and dropped it.
“Hey!” Diane shouted.
The figure bolted through the broken back window. Glass scattered across the floor as it vanished into the yard.
Diane reached the door but stopped short of the broken pane. Outside, the yard was empty except for wind stirring the dead leaves. She could hear no car pulling away, no footsteps beyond the fence.
Veronica clutched the doorframe behind her. “Was it him?”
“I don’t know.” Diane forced her voice steady. “Come away from the glass.”
She ushered Veronica into the living room and called Cho. Then she returned to the kitchen, keeping Veronica close enough to touch. The nurse bag lay on its side, its contents spilled across the floor: old gauze, a blood-pressure cuff, a faded badge clip. The intruder had searched it in a hurry. Or had come looking for something specific.
Diane crouched to gather the scattered items. Her hands had begun to shake. She pressed them flat against her thighs until the tremor eased.
“Grandma,” Veronica said. “My keepsake box.”
They found it under a stack of school papers in the spare bedroom. The cardboard lid bore Veronica’s careful block letters. Inside were a paper sun, a row of seashells, and the pressed flower, protected between two sheets of wax paper.
The flower’s brittle petals were intact. The tiny key was gone.
Diane looked again, lifting the paper, checking the box’s corners. Nothing.
“Did you take the key out?” she asked.
Veronica shook her head. “I didn’t know it was there.”
Diane’s stomach knotted. The intruder could have searched the box—or someone could have taken the key earlier. She couldn’t tell which possibility frightened her more.
Cho called back and told Diane not to touch anything else until officers arrived. Diane promised she wouldn’t. She stayed in the bedroom doorway while Veronica began sorting the contents, her movements slow and careful.
On the floor beside the box lay a drawing Diane had seen that morning. Veronica had drawn three people holding hands beneath a yellow sun: herself, Bertha, and Diane. In one corner, in dark pencil, were two words that had not been there before.
SCHOOL LOCKER.
Diane bent closer. The letters were uneven, but the pencil marks looked fresh.
“Did you write this?” she asked.
Veronica stared at the page. “No.”
“Could you have, and forgotten?”
“I didn’t write it.” Veronica’s eyes filled. “Mommy wants us to go there.”
Diane had no answer that wouldn’t either frighten the child or promise more than she knew. She took Veronica’s hand.
A phone rang in the kitchen.
Diane reached it just before the call went to voicemail. A woman introduced herself as an administrator from Veronica’s school. Her voice was tight with the strain of someone trying to remain calm while a situation unfolded in front of her.
“Mrs. Diane, I need to confirm that Veronica is with you.”
“She is. What happened?”
“Christopher is here at the school, asking to collect her. He says you’re keeping her from him unlawfully.”
Diane looked at Veronica. The child had gone still, the drawing clutched to her chest.
“He knows she isn’t at school,” Diane said.
May you like
The administrator fell silent for half a breath.
“Mrs. Diane,” she said, “he’s insisting we tell him where she is.”
