“Huh. I just realized something,” I say, my voice clipped and cynical. “You don’t know anything about this case. Not a thing. Detectives haven’t shared information with you. The guy down my street knows more than you. He said Leland was flirting with her.” I shove the word flirting off my tongue like Lou did, head high, shoulders back, but inside I’m quivering. “Why didn’t you just tell me straight you knew nothing? Why waste your time, my time?”
I cringe at my poor manners and cruel accusations, and hold my breath. I am crossing my fingers that he’s embarrassed for me and he won’t mention to Liz that her friend is a douche.
He sighs again. Not condescending, but annoyed. “Off the record. This is off the record. Ava’s dad told detectives Leland took an interest in the girl. They hired him to paint interior walls, the kitchen and bathrooms, I think. He was there, painting, for a week and he talked to Ava a bunch of times. He was trying to teach her to whistle.”
My breath catches. His casual tone is like steel wool rubbing against my tender eardrum. He was trying to teach her to whistle. It sounds innocent, yet it sounds lewd. I gnaw at wet, rubbery skin along my thumb, biting tiny pieces off, willing myself to not interrupt.
“He asked her what she wanted for her birthday. Asked her what color her room was painted. One day he gave her a Happy Meal toy. A Shopkin character.”
Chuck definitely has a kid. No other reason to know about Shopkins: plastic, thumb-size figures which personify food items or accessories. A happy, wide-eyed root beer float. A winking, long-eyelashed ice cream sundae. A coquettish handbag. Chloe has about thirty of them.
“Ava’s dad let her keep the toy, but he didn’t like the gesture. She goes missing a week later,” Chuck says. “They interviewed Leland once and didn’t get anywhere. That is all I heard.”
Dang, Chuck. You didn’t even make me work that hard.
Maybe because it’s the weekend and he’s working from home. Maybe he’s barefoot, sitting on his deck, sipping coffee. Maybe he’s in his boxer shorts. Maybe he’s hungover. But I’m pretty sure it’s because I called him an out-of-the-loop loser, and it got to him.
I open my mouth, ready to probe into what else Ava’s dad might have told detectives, but I glance at the sandbox.
Empty.
Wyatt is on the swing, gazing into the tree canopy. The other swing is bare.
“Thanks, Chuck. I’ve got to go.” I try to open the screen, but it jams. I fixed the damn thing last week. I knock the screen door off track and, as I run into the grass scanning for a pink T-shirt, the screen crashes onto the deck behind me.
“Chloe! Wyatt, where’s Chlo?”
I am running toward the side of the house.
Oh God, if she ran to the front yard! She doesn’t have the no-street-thing down. Oh God.
“She’s over there, Mom,” Wyatt says, unworried, pointing toward the shed.
I breathe, Wyatt’s calm voice lulling me back, and turn.
There she is, smiling beside my daylilies, hedge clippers in her small hands. My heart stops. Sunlight accentuates the blade’s sharpness as she opens and closes the clippers. If those things can cut a small tree, they could easily slice off one of her fingers. Or pierce her neck.
“Baby,” I say gently, trying not to alarm her or make her run and trip, but my voice cracks. “Baby, you’re helping Momma with gardening. You’re so sweet. Let me get you a shovel so we can dig weeds.” Her eyes sparkle with mischief. It’s likely she’s considering turning this into a game of hedge-clipper tag.
Every moment feels a millisecond from disaster.
“A caterpillar! Look, Chlo,” I point to a bush and swipe the clippers from her hands.
“Where’s a caterpillar?”
“It was just there,” I lie. “Maybe he crawled under the leaf. Let’s look.”
Don’t be mad at Wyatt. He’s not your babysitter.
“Where is it?” As she peeks under leaves, she trips on who-knows-what in the grass. I catch her by the armpit before she falls.
“Let’s take a popsicle break,” I say, my body already anticipating ten minutes of calm. My children eat popsicles with utmost focus and silence. Like surgeons excising a sticky, pervasive tumor.
Wyatt mumbles sarcastically. Something about it being early for a popsicle break.
Letting my guard down, I glance over at Leland Ernest’s house.
He is standing on his small cement porch, sipping from what appears to be a juice box with a small straw. Head tipped back, he’s gazing up at the sky. No, his eyes are closed.
I have only seen him a handful of times since I moved in. Unfortunate for bad stereotypes, he looks like he walked straight out of a Flannery O’Connor novel. He is mid-thirties. His skin is the white and doughy shade of someone who stays inside. His belly is soft and stretches his shirt. His hair is straw blond.
Each time I have seen him, I’ve greeted him in a conservative, but friendly, neighborly way. But that was before I knew.
He glances toward my house now. His lips release his juice box straw, and he waves at me.
He was trying to teach her to whistle.
I picture Leland licking his lips, puckering them, and blowing softly. I picture him watching Ava’s mouth as he instructs her to do the same.
My belly feels slippery, full of squirming fish, their silvery scales flashing as they whisk. I consider marching over there and telling him I know what he’s done even though I know nothing. I consider giving him the finger.
“Momma, I want them juice box too.”
Ignoring his wave, I gaze down at my daughter.
“What’s wrong, Momma?”
“Nothing. I’m fine, baby.” I smile and, through my blurry eyes and under bright sunshine, her white-gold hair shimmers like jewels on water.
These past five days I have told myself, This is not a big deal. He is only a suspect. Don’t let his proximity hold your peace captive. Today I told myself we have had a gentle morning, a good morning, but it is a lie.
My children are playing twenty feet away from a man suspected of kidnapping a small child.
She’s been missing five months. Murdering a small child.
He has had my heart squeezed in his grubby palm the whole morning: while we picked raspberries, while we swung, while I watched Wyatt smile and Chloe giggle.
Like the bees in my shed, he hovers in the dark composting corner of my mind. His presence is a subtle but frightening vibration, a hum.
I look over at my neighbor’s house again. His cement slab of a porch is sunny and bare, holding nothing more than a chair and a plastic pot of marigolds. He is nowhere in sight.
The doorbell rings inside my house.
6
PEACE BE WITH YOUR VAGINA
My ex. Nate.
If he’d have cheated once, I would have stayed. Five times, he was wiping his ass with my soul.
He’s wearing green scrubs and his forehead is shiny. It doesn’t matter that he’s glossy from sweat, his healthy glow and career’s importance emanate from him like an aura. Standing on the other side of my dingy screen door, he seems out of place, simulated and artificial.
Comfort and nostalgia wash over me because he knows me, intimately. Understands me. He is my best friend.
The warm and fuzzy feelings don’t stick.