Chapter 4 - the first thing i did right
Dana did not give me Elise’s location.
I didn’t ask again.
That mattered.
A week earlier, I would have demanded it.
Instead, I told her exactly what I had seen in the nursery, including the part I least wanted to say out loud.
“I hit Corinne.”
Dana went quiet.
“I’m not proud of it.”
“No,” she said. “You shouldn’t be.”
“I know.”
Another pause.
“But she was doing that to Maisie?”
“Yes.”
Dana muttered something under her breath.
Then she said, “Take care of your daughter. I’ll talk to Elise.”
That afternoon, I made three decisions.
First, I called the locksmith who had changed our locks after we bought the house six years earlier.
Corinne had a key.
By dinner, she didn’t.
Second, I called Little Oaks, the daycare Maisie attended three mornings a week, and removed Corinne from the pickup list.
The director, Mrs. Alvarez, sounded surprised.
“Is everything okay?”
“No,” I said. “But Maisie is safe.”
She asked me to email the change in writing.
I did.
Third, I called my boss.
I had already missed two calls and an afternoon meeting.
“I need tomorrow off.”
There was a long silence.
We were bidding on a hospital expansion project worth more than anything I had handled before.
“You know the deadline,” he said.
“I know.”
“Ryan, I can cover you today. I can’t cover you all week.”
“I understand.”
For once, I didn’t try to solve my family by sacrificing the person with less power.
That night, Maisie refused to sleep in her nursery.
Every time I lowered her into the crib, she reached for me and cried.
So I sat with her on the living-room couch until almost midnight.
At 12:17, my phone rang.
Elise.
I almost answered with a flood of explanations.
Instead I said, “Hi.”
Her voice was guarded.
“Dana told me about the letter.”
“I never got it.”
“I know that now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what part?”
There were too many answers.
“For making it believable that you’d be afraid to talk to me.”
Silence.
Then I heard Elise breathe out.
It was not forgiveness.
But she had not hung up.
I told her about the nursery.
She began crying before I finished.
“Did Corinne hurt her?”
“She’s physically okay. I’m taking her to the pediatrician tomorrow anyway.”
“And the recording?”
“I still have the speaker.”
Another long silence.
Then Elise said, “There was a recording.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What did you say?”
“I don’t remember every word.”
“You told Maisie you weren’t coming back?”
“No.”
Her answer was immediate.
Then quieter:
“I said I wasn’t coming back to the house that night.”
My eyes closed.
“Why did Corinne have it?”
“Because I sent it to her.”
I opened my eyes.
Elise continued.
“And Ryan, if she played the part I think she played, then she didn’t just hide my letter.”
May you like
“What did she do?”
“She cut my voice apart.”
