Chapter 2 - Three Days in the Yellow House
Lily knew her address.
That saved time.
A yellow rental house on the edge of Stamford, a little over three miles from the hospital by the route a child would know.
When I asked how she had reached us, she described following the bus road because her mother had once pointed toward the hospital and said, “That’s where doctors stay awake all night.”
Police and paramedics were sent immediately.
I did not go.
My responsibility was the three children already in front of me.
The twins were estimated to be five days old.
Both were dehydrated.
Both were mildly hypothermic.
The smaller boy had low blood sugar.
Neither showed signs of trauma.
That mattered.
Whoever had cared for them before Lily arrived had done something right under terrible circumstances.
Hannah asked Lily what the babies had eaten.
“Little bottles.”
Ready-to-feed formula.
“Where did you get them?”
“The bag from the hospital.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who showed you how?”
“Mommy.”
That answer made me pause.
“When?”
“The first day.”
Lily’s understanding of three days was not the same as an adult’s.
Megan had not been completely unconscious for seventy-two continuous hours.
She had been drifting in and out.
Sometimes opening her eyes.
Sometimes whispering.
Unable to stand.
Unable to stay awake long.
Lily had brought the babies to her mother when they cried.
Megan showed her how to open the ready-to-feed bottles from the discharge bag.
How to hold each baby.
How to keep blankets away from their faces.
How to count wet diapers.
Then Megan became less responsive.
Lily remembered her mother getting up once and falling beside the couch.
After that, she barely moved.
“Was anybody else home?”
Lily looked down.
“My daddy left.”
“When?”
“The day Mommy got sick.”
“Did he know she was sick?”
Lily nodded.
“What did he say?”
Her voice dropped.
“He said she was making everybody crazy again.”
I felt Hannah go still beside me.
Seven years earlier, the man sitting beside Megan’s hospital bed had used almost identical language.
Megan makes things bigger than they are.
Megan gets emotional.
Megan likes doctors to feel sorry for her.
His name was Derek Carter.
Her husband.
Lily’s father.
The twins’ father too, according to Lily.
I had not known Megan went back to him.
That was not unusual in abuse cases.
Leaving is rarely a straight line.
People return because of money, children, promises, fear, housing, religion, hope, pressure, or because the person who hurt them becomes convincing again.
Knowing that did not make hearing it easier.
Lily told Hannah there had been another adult in the house.
“Grandma Pam.”
Derek’s mother.
“When did she leave?”
“Before Daddy.”
“What did she say about your mom?”
Lily picked at one sore palm.
“She said Mommy takes too many pills.”
My attention sharpened.
“What pills?”
“The white bottle.”
“Do you know what they were for?”
Lily shook her head.
Megan had delivered the twins by Cesarean section five days earlier at another hospital.
Pain medication would not be unusual.
Neither would antibiotics.
Neither would blood-pressure medication.
A child could not distinguish any of them.
Then my phone vibrated.
The paramedic supervisor at the house.
Megan had been found alive.
Barely responsive.
Feverish.
Dangerously high blood pressure.
Evidence of severe postpartum infection.
And one thing that did not fit the story Derek had apparently been telling everyone.
The medication organizer beside the couch contained pills that did not match several labels on Megan’s discharge list.
Nobody yet knew whether that meant an error, misunderstanding, or tampering.
But police found something else in the kitchen.
Megan’s phone.
May you like
Inside a locked cabinet.
Along with her car keys.
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