Chapter 2 - THE FIRST NIGHT AWAY
I drove for twenty minutes before I realized I had no idea where I was going.
Maisie sat strapped into her car seat behind me.
Every few minutes she sniffled.
Then she whispered, “Mommy?”
“I’m here, baby.”
“Nana mad?”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“No.”
I swallowed hard.
“Nana did something wrong.”
Maisie touched her cheek.
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
I had never wanted to teach my daughter that someone she loved could be unsafe.
But I wanted even less to teach her that love required pretending pain had not happened.
I drove to a hotel near the interstate.
It was nothing special.
Two floors.
Gray carpet.
A vending machine beside the elevator.
But when I locked the room door behind us, I felt safer than I had felt in my own home for months.
I gave Maisie a warm bath.
She played with a plastic cup from the bathroom and eventually smiled.
That tiny smile nearly broke me.
After she fell asleep, I sat on the floor beside the bed with my phone.
There were forty-three missed calls.
Seventeen were from Evan.
Nine were from Margaret.
Six were from numbers I did not recognize.
The family group chat had exploded.
Margaret’s sister wrote that I had “attacked Evan like an animal.”
A cousin asked whether anyone had checked his face.
Another relative said nothing about Maisie.
Not one person asked how my two-year-old daughter was doing.
Then a message arrived from Tessa.
Are you somewhere safe?
I answered.
Yes.
Three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then appeared again.
I saved the full livestream before Mom made me delete it from my account.
I sat up straighter.
Send it to me.
Her reply came immediately.
Not yet.
I stared at the screen.
Why?
She took almost two minutes to answer.
Because Mom is in my apartment right now.
My blood went cold.
Tessa lived fifteen minutes from Margaret.
Why would Margaret leave her own birthday dinner to go there?
Another message arrived.
She wants my phone.
Then another.
She keeps asking whether the livestream automatically backed up.
I typed quickly.
Do not give her anything.
Tessa responded.
Claire, there’s something else.
I waited.
Nothing came.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
I called.
The call went straight to voicemail.
At 11:38 p.m., Evan finally stopped calling me.
At 11:46, Margaret stopped.
At 12:03, I received a photograph from Tessa.
It showed a manila folder sitting on Margaret’s kitchen counter.
Across the top page were three words.
TEMPORARY CAREGIVER AUTHORIZATION.
Below them was Maisie’s full legal name.
May you like
And near the bottom of the page was Evan’s signature.
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