Chapter 2 - What Everyone Had Chosen Not to See
Ryan didn't smash the phone.
Later, he would be grateful for that.
In the moment, every part of him wanted to.
Instead, Mark took one look at Ryan's face and quietly said, “Don't destroy anything.”
That sentence reached him.
Ryan put the phone on the mantel and lifted Emma from the bassinet.
She pressed her face into his neck.
Vanessa followed him toward the hallway.
“You don't get to take my phone.”
“You're worried about your phone?”
“I'm worried about you losing your mind.”
Nicole gave a short, humorless laugh from behind them.
“You already hit me.”
Ryan stopped.
That was true.
Whatever he'd seen, whatever they had done, he'd struck her.
Patricia finally spoke.
“Everybody needs to calm down.”
Ryan turned on his mother so fast she flinched.
“No. Somebody needed to speak up before I walked in.”
Patricia looked away.
That frightened him more than anything she'd said.
Ryan carried Emma upstairs and began packing the diaper bag.
Vanessa stood in the bedroom doorway.
“Where are you going?”
“Children's Mercy urgent care.”
“She isn't hurt.”
“You don't know that.”
“We never dropped her.”
Ryan froze with a clean sleeper in his hand.
Again, the wording.
Never dropped her.
Not we didn't do it.
Not this never happened before.
Vanessa realized what she'd said.
Ryan put the sleeper in the bag.
“How long?”
She shook her head.
“You're twisting everything.”
“Then tell me what I'm twisting.”
Vanessa's jaw tightened.
Downstairs, Nicole was speaking loudly enough for them to hear.
“If he doesn't get back down here, I'm calling somebody.”
“Call whoever you want,” Ryan said.
Twenty minutes later, he strapped Emma into her rear-facing car seat and drove from their Overland Park subdivision toward the pediatric urgent care clinic near 135th Street.
Patricia came with him.
Ryan hadn't invited her.
She had simply climbed into the passenger seat.
For most of the drive, Emma made soft hiccuping noises from the back.
Patricia kept looking over her shoulder.
“She seems okay.”
Ryan stared ahead.
“Don't.”
“I was only saying—”
“Don't tell me she's okay because you need her to be okay.”
Patricia went quiet.
At the clinic, a pediatric nurse practitioner examined Emma's shoulders, arms, neck, ribs, and head. There were no visible injuries. Her range of motion was normal. Her pupils were normal. She took a bottle after several minutes in Ryan's arms.
Ryan nearly cried when the nurse practitioner told him she appeared physically unharmed.
Then the woman sat down instead of leaving.
“You said this wasn't the first time?”
“I don't know.”
“Who normally watches her?”
Ryan rubbed his forehead.
“Me. Daycare three days a week. Vanessa on Fridays. Sometimes Vanessa's sister.”
Patricia shifted beside him.
The nurse practitioner noticed.
Ryan did too.
“What?”
Patricia studied the floor.
“Nothing.”
“Mom.”
She exhaled.
“A few weeks ago, Emma cried when Vanessa came into the room.”
Ryan waited.
Patricia kept going reluctantly.
“I thought it was separation anxiety.”
“You never told me.”
“Babies cry.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
Patricia's mouth tightened.
“There was something else.”
Ryan felt his stomach turn.
“Say it.”
“Mia mentioned it.”
Mia Grant was the seventeen-year-old daughter of their neighbors, a high school senior who babysat occasionally when Ryan and Vanessa went out to dinner.
“What did Mia say?”
“That Emma got upset whenever Nicole brought over the tall light.”
Ryan remembered the narrow black stand he'd moved twice from the hall closet without knowing what it was.
Patricia rubbed her hands together.
“I told Mia Vanessa was making social-media videos. I told her not to read too much into it.”
Ryan looked through the glass panel in the exam-room door.
His own reflection looked back at him.
Tired.
Angry.
And suddenly ashamed.
The nurse practitioner asked whether Ryan had somewhere else to stay with Emma that night.
“Yes.”
His older sister Claire lived fifteen minutes away.
The nurse nodded.
“Then tonight isn't about solving your marriage. It's about making sure your daughter is somewhere calm while you figure out exactly what happened.”
Ryan looked at Patricia.
“I'm going to Claire's.”
His mother swallowed.
“I understand.”
“No, you don't.”
May you like
He zipped Emma's diaper bag.
“Because before I decide what Vanessa knew, I'm finding out what everybody else knew too.”
