Chapter 1 - THE SKILLET
The skillet struck Emma before I could reach her.
Its rim caught her across the left shoulder and the side of her head. Eggs scattered over Lily’s breakfast plate, and hot grease spotted the floor as my four-year-old daughter folded against the cabinets.
“Mommy!”
Her cry stopped when her head struck the tile.
I ran.
Patricia stepped between me and Emma with both hands raised, as though my panic was the dangerous thing in the room.
“Shut up! You’re so damn loud.”
I shoved past her.
Emma lay beside Lily’s chair with one bare foot tucked beneath her. Her mismatched purple sock remained on the other foot. The pink cup she had apparently been drinking from rolled beneath the table while juice spread toward Gerald’s slippers.
“Emma, sweetheart, open your eyes.”
Nothing.
I pressed two fingers against her neck.
Pulse.
Fast.
Her chest rose shallowly.
Gerald lowered his coffee mug, but he did not move from the head of the table.
Vanessa folded her arms.
“She shouldn’t have been sitting there.”
I looked at the woman who had just hurled hot iron at a preschooler.
“You threw that pan at a four-year-old child.”
“She was touching Lily’s food.”
Lily sat frozen in her pajamas. Her small face had gone white. A piece of egg remained balanced on the edge of her fork.
Emma’s skin reddened where grease had soaked through her sweatshirt. A swelling already formed near her temple.
I slid one arm beneath her back and another beneath her knees.
“Did it ever cross your minds what would happen next?”
Vanessa gave a brittle laugh.
“You always threaten people when you don’t get your way.”
I carried Emma toward the kitchen door.
Patricia grabbed my cardigan.
“You are not taking her anywhere until we decide how to explain this.”
That sentence told me more than an apology ever could.
I twisted free, took out my phone, and called 911.
“My four-year-old daughter was struck by a hot skillet and lost consciousness. We’re at the Hayes residence on Briarwood Lane.”
Vanessa lunged toward me.
Gerald finally stood.
“Let her call.”
Patricia turned on him.
“You pathetic coward.”
I moved into the foyer where the front door was visible. Emma’s eyelashes fluttered once.
“Daddy,” she whispered.
My heart tightened.
Ethan had been missing for four days.
Patricia claimed he had left for a private business retreat after an argument with me. Vanessa said he needed distance from the “burden” of raising another man’s child.
Ethan had adopted Emma eighteen months earlier.
He had never called her a burden.
“Where is Daddy?” I asked.
Emma’s lips barely moved.
“Downstairs.”
Patricia appeared in the doorway.
“She’s confused from the fall.”
“What downstairs?”
Emma lifted one shaking hand toward the back of the house.
“The room with no windows.”
Gerald’s coffee mug slipped against its saucer.
The sound was small.
His reaction was not.
He looked toward the basement door.
Vanessa saw him looking and hurried across the kitchen.
“There is no room down there.”
Sirens approached outside.
Patricia reached for the basement key hanging beside the pantry.
The hook was empty.
Two paramedics entered with sheriff’s deputies moments later. I refused to let anyone from the family answer for me.
I described the throw.
Lily began crying.
“Mom did it,” she said before Vanessa could stop her. “She got mad because Emma was hungry.”
A deputy separated Vanessa immediately.
Another photographed the skillet, the spilled juice, and the bloodless but unmistakable impact mark near the cabinet.
Paramedics placed Emma on a stretcher and stabilized her neck.
As they lifted her, something metallic fell from the pocket of her sweatshirt.
It struck the tile beside my heel.
A silver cufflink engraved with the letter E.
I recognized it.
I had fastened its twin onto Ethan’s sleeve the night before he disappeared.
May you like
Emma opened her eyes just long enough to look at me.
“Daddy gave it to me in the dark.”
