Chapter 6 - WHY ETHAN THOUGHT THE GIRL IN THE WALL WAS NORMALEthan had nightmares for three nights after Grace was found.
He kept asking one question.
“Is she still in the wall?”
No seven-year-old should ever have needed an answer to that.
Lauren and I took turns sleeping in the chair beside his bed until he stopped waking up crying.
On the fourth morning, he asked if he could tell me something without Vanessa getting mad.
That sentence hurt more than I expected.
“She doesn’t live here anymore,” I said carefully. “You can tell me anything.”
He nodded, rubbing his thumb over a split in his blanket.
“She was there before yesterday.”
“How long?”
He thought hard.
“Maybe… since after pancakes.”
That was two full days.
My chest tightened.
“What did you hear?”
“At first I thought it was a cat. Then I heard crying. Vanessa said it was mice in the wall and if I told you, you’d be mad because work was hard.”
I stayed very still.
“What happened next?”
“I found the vent when she went upstairs. The girl said she was hungry. I pushed crackers in first, but they broke. So I used bread because bread was softer.”
His eyes filled.
“I wanted to open it but it had the tiny lock and Vanessa always had the key.”
“Did Vanessa know you found her?”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She saw me talking to the vent. She told me if I fed the girl, she’d die faster because she’d choke in the dark.”
For a second, I couldn’t speak.
Ethan’s face crumpled immediately.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I still gave her bread.”
I pulled him into my lap so fast the chair nearly tipped.
“No,” I said, voice breaking. “No, buddy. You did exactly the right thing.”
He pressed his face into my shoulder.
“She said you wore blue jackets.”
That made me freeze.
“What?”
“The little girl said her mommy showed her a picture and said her daddy wore blue work jackets and had a scar on his chin.”
I touched the scar without thinking.
“He’s safe,” Ethan whispered, repeating my own words back to me. “That’s what her mommy said.”
The truth hit me sideways then.
Grace had not reached through the vent and called me Daddy because she guessed.
She had been waiting for me specifically.
Even locked in the wall, she had believed her mother enough to keep looking for the man in the blue jacket.
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That was the kind of trust you do not deserve automatically.
You earn it, or you spend the rest of your life regretting that you did not get the chance.
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