Chapter 15 - What My Mother Knew
Claire was handcuffed on the lawn while paramedics treated a scrape on her forehead and officers photographed the burned side of the playhouse.
Diane sat at the kitchen table looking about twenty years older than she had that morning.
I left Emma with Rosa upstairs, then came back down and stood across from my mother without sitting.
“How long?” I asked.
She blinked up at me. “What?”
“How long did you know Claire was hurting Emma?”
Tears filled her eyes immediately. “I didn’t know like this.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Diane gripped the edge of the chair. “She told me she was giving Emma structure. She said you were too soft. She said Melissa let the child run wild and now nobody could tell her no.”
I almost laughed from the insanity of it.
“Emma is seven.”
“I know that now.”
“No,” I said quietly. “You knew that then too.”
That landed.
My mother’s shoulders folded. “I thought if you got married again, you’d stop living in the past. I thought Claire was polished, composed, practical. The opposite of chaos.”
“Emma wasn’t chaos. She was inconvenient to the life you wanted me to have.”
Diane started crying in earnest.
“I made excuses,” she whispered. “The pantry. The way Emma flinched. I told myself children can be dramatic.”
I leaned both hands on the island because suddenly I needed the support.
“The pantry?”
Diane looked up slowly. “I knew about that one.”
Something inside me turned to stone.
“You knew,” I repeated.
“She said it was five minutes.”
“Get out.”
“Ethan—”
“Get out of my house.”
She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “Please don’t do this.”
“You already did it.”
Rosa appeared at the kitchen door with Emma’s rabbit in her hands and a strange look on her face.
“Mr. Mercer,” she said carefully, “Emma is not in her room.”
I stared at her.
“No,” I said.
May you like
Rosa nodded once, frightened. “Her window is open. And the rabbit was left on the bed.”
Every bit of air vanished from the room.
