Chapter 3 - Lily Was Hiding
The search for Lily lasted forty-three minutes.
It felt like four days.
Mark drove straight to my parents’ neighborhood while officers searched the house, backyard, garage, and nearby streets.
Vanessa’s car was gone.
Lily’s jacket was still hanging by the front door.
Her shoes were beside the stairs.
That detail terrified me.
A six-year-old child had not voluntarily left the house without shoes in August.
Then an officer heard tapping.
It came from inside my father’s workshop behind the garage.
The door was locked from the outside.
Lily was inside.
She was curled beneath his workbench with a blanket around her shoulders.
My mother claimed Lily must have locked herself in.
The lock was a metal slide bolt mounted on the exterior.
Even my father could not explain that.
Mark called me after Lily was taken to a child advocacy center.
“She’s okay physically.”
I leaned against the hospital wall.
“Did she say who locked her in?”
“They don’t want me questioning her.”
“That’s probably right.”
“I know.”
His voice broke.
“I just keep thinking she was alone in there.”
I understood.
I had spent the morning thinking about Emma alone on that kitchen floor.
Children remembered the moments adults hoped they would forget.
At 12:30 p.m., Emma woke briefly.
Her left eye was swollen.
Bandages covered part of her cheek and forehead.
I sat beside her and tried not to let her see my fear.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
Her voice was weak.
“Did I make Grandma mad?”
The question nearly broke me.
“No.”
“Because I ate Lily’s egg?”
“No, sweetheart.”
She started crying.
The monitor beside her accelerated.
A nurse came in and asked me to keep her calm.
I stroked Emma’s hair.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Emma stared at me through one half-open eye.
“Aunt Vanessa said bad girls steal food.”
“You are not bad.”
“Grandma said she would teach me.”
My hand froze.
“Teach you what?”
Emma’s eyelids drooped.
“Where I belong.”
Then she fell asleep again.
I sat there holding her hand until Detective Cole returned.
He had spoken with officers at my parents’ house.
Vanessa’s whereabouts were still unknown.
My parents were cooperating just enough to avoid immediate arrest.
Cole placed photographs on the small table.
The kitchen.
The skillet.
The chair.
A broken plate.
Orange juice on the floor.
Then one photograph caught my attention.
The stove.
There were two skillets.
The black one that had landed beside Emma.
And a second silver pan still sitting on the burner.
“Why are there two pans?”
Cole watched me.
“I was going to ask you.”
“My mother makes eggs in the silver skillet.”
“Are you sure?”
“She’s used that same pan for years.”
“Then what was the black pan being used for?”
I stared at the photograph.
I remembered breakfast before going upstairs.
The black skillet had not been on the stove.
It had been hanging from a rack over the island.
Someone had taken it down.
Someone had heated it.
Someone had carried it toward the table.
That didn’t prove planning.
But it made Vanessa’s explanation harder to believe.
Cole slid another photograph forward.
It showed the trash can.
Inside were several pieces of paper.
One was partly burned.
Investigators had flattened it.
Across the top, in my mother’s handwriting, were four words.
Rachel leaves at eight.
Below that was another line.
Vanessa talks to Emma.
I looked at Cole.
“What is that?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
I couldn’t.
Then I saw the final line.
If she cries, send Lily upstairs.
My stomach turned.
May you like
This had not started when Emma took a piece of toast.
Something had been planned before breakfast began.
