Chapter 2 - A Name on the Badge
The sergeant stayed with us while Brandt stepped out of the interview room. My mother sat very still, her coat folded over her lap, as if the room had become a place where even shifting could be used against her.
The sergeant glanced at the identification I’d placed on the table. “You’re Anna?”
“Yes.”
Brandt had seen my name before. I’d spent the past year challenging the department’s handling of civil-rights complaints, work that made people behind badges remember me whether they wanted to or not.
I wasn’t there as an investigator, and I had no authority over the report. I was there because my mother had asked for me—and because her arm was turning purple beneath her sleeve.
“May I take pictures?” I asked her.
She looked down at the bruise. “You need them?”
“I want a record of what I saw tonight. But only if you’re comfortable.”
After a moment, she nodded. I photographed her forearm and the swelling at her shoulder, stopping whenever she winced. The camera made a quiet click; my mother flinched anyway.
The sergeant had arranged for us to go to the emergency department. I drove, with my mother’s coat wrapped around her and one hand braced against the door.
At every turn, she drew in a breath through her teeth.
“You can tell them how much it hurts,” I said.
“I know.”
She said it like an apology. I kept both hands on the wheel.
At the hospital, the waiting-room television played a weather report no one was watching. The air smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee. My mother held her coat closed while we waited, her eyes fixed on the automatic doors.
When a nurse called her name, she tried to rise without using her injured arm. I reached out, then stopped short.
“Can I help?”
She nodded. I steadied her elbow as she stood.
The X-ray took only a few minutes. The waiting afterward stretched long enough for the coffee smell to turn bitter in my throat. When the clinician came back, she pulled a chair close to my mother instead of speaking from the doorway.
“There’s a small fracture near the top of your upper arm,” she said. “We’ll get you into a sling and arrange follow-up care.”
My mother stared at her. “A fracture.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, she looked less frightened than ashamed. I felt my own anger rise, but there was nowhere useful to put it—not at the clinician, not at my mother, and not yet at Britta.
While the nurse fitted the sling, my mother turned her face toward me.
“I told them it was just sore.”
“You were hurt.”
“I know what I was.”
She swallowed, her good hand gripping the edge of the exam table. “I kept thinking if I made it sound smaller, then maybe what happened could still be smaller.”
I didn’t answer right away. The sling held her arm close to her body, a plain piece of fabric that made the injury impossible to soften.
“I didn’t want her to become someone who could do this,” she whispered.
“She did do it,” I said. “That doesn’t mean you have to stop loving her.”
My mother shut her eyes. “I know. I just wanted one more chance to tell myself she hadn’t meant it.”
The drive home was quiet. The first blue-gray light of morning had begun to thin the darkness, but my mother kept her eyes on the window, as if the streets might offer an explanation we’d missed.
At the curb, I took out my phone to check the time. A message from an unknown number glowed on the screen.
Stop digging. The Alder Street house was settled years ago. Keep pushing, and your family will lose it.
I read it once, then again. The words stayed exactly the same.
My mother saw my face. “What is it?”
I handed her the phone.
She read the message, and the color drained from her cheeks. Her good hand tightened around the coat.
“That house was settled,” she said.
“Settled how?”
She kept staring at the screen. “We settled it when Grandpa died.”
May you like
A car rolled slowly past the end of the block. By the time I looked up, it had turned the corner.
Someone had just named the one piece of Grandpa’s business we’d thought was finished.
