Kevin rolled his eyes, then gestured with his head toward their out-of-commission charge.

“We should take her home,” he said again.

But Wyatt just couldn’t do it. They were pushing their luck. With the case, with Nicky’s fragile mental state.

He still heard himself say, “Not just yet.”

Chapter 18

VERO IS IN the closet. She is wedged back as far as she can go, knees clutched tight against her chest, while the woman piles blankets on her.

“Don’t make a sound,” the woman orders, voice low, tone fearful. “He’s had a bad day; that’s all. Temper’s a little hot. So be good. Stay out of the way. Understand me, child?”

Vero nods. She’s afraid of the dark. She doesn’t want to be trapped alone in a cramped, smelly closet. But by now she understands there are worse things than abstract terrors. For example, why worry about the monster beneath the bed when a very real bogeyman sleeps on top of it?

I want to comfort her. I feel her growing dread as my own. But when I reach out my hand, nothing happens. I’m here, but I’m not here. I’m the outsider looking in. And I keep my attention on Vero because the woman . . . the woman hurts too much.

The woman steps back. She’s done the best she can. It won’t be enough; I know that. But at least she tried, and for a woman leading her life, that’s something.

Footsteps, down the hall. The sounding board of my life, I think. Footsteps thudding down corridors, menacing me.

The woman closes the closet door. Not all the way; she leaves a faint sliver of light because once Vero had panicked in the pitch-black and had started to scream. The man hadn’t liked that. He’d beaten them both until their faces were bloody and Vero had lost consciousness. The woman had had to wait until he finally rolled over, snoring loudly, before she could ease out of the bed and curl up around her daughter’s motionless form.

She’d held her all night long, rocking soundlessly, begging her baby girl not to die, because she was all she had, her only hope, her one bright light. Without her, she’d be lost in the dark, and though the woman couldn’t say it out loud, all of her life, she’d been afraid of the dark, too.

Vero had survived. Another night, another day, another week, another month. The woman survived, too, and so they rolled along in this seedy little apartment, both living in dread of footsteps down the hall.

Tonight, the man staggers into the bedroom. His shirt is already off, his hairy belly rolling over the waistband of his sagging jeans.

“Woman,” he roars, reaching for his belt. “Why the fuck aren’t you naked?”

In the back of the closet, Vero whimpers.

I’m sorry, I try to tell her. You shouldn’t be seeing this. You shouldn’t be living this.

But we both know this is nothing new, and the worst is yet to come. Outside these walls. In an entirely different place with scores of footsteps tramping down floorboards. The woman isn’t perfect, but at least she tries. Soon, sooner than Vero realizes, the woman will be gone and all she’ll have is a rosebush with bloody thorns climbing up a wall. Then this dirty closet will seem like paradise, if only Vero had known it at the time.

The woman strips off her stained blue housecoat. Best to do as he says. No only makes things worse.

The man grunts in approval. Kicks his pants off. Demands the now-naked woman come over, get to work.

Vero closes her eyes. She doesn’t like to see, but there is nothing she can do about the sounds. Once she tried humming, but he found her and beat her again.

“Kids are to be seen, not heard!” he’d roared at her, which Vero had found confusing, because best she could tell, she wasn’t allowed to be seen either. She reappeared in the apartment only once the man went to work. Then she and her mother were together, and briefly, all was well. Until the sound of footsteps in the outside hall. The jiggle of a key in the apartment’s front door.

This is Vero’s life. At six, who is she to argue?

The noises finally stop. The woman is crying softly, but that’s nothing new. Vero is rocking back and forth. She’s hungry. She needs to pee. But she waits for the sound of snoring. That’s the all clear, the signal it’s safe to come out.

Eventually, after it seems forever has passed, the man falls asleep. The closet door eases open. The woman stands there.

Her right eye is swollen. She moves gingerly, as if her entire body aches. But neither she nor the girl comments. This is the woman’s life, too, and she learned long ago not to argue.

The woman helps Vero out of the closet. They tiptoe out of the bedroom, into the cramped family room, the tiny kitchenette. Vero finally pees, but doesn’t flush the toilet. For the next few hours she and the woman share the same goal: Don’t wake the slumbering beast.

The woman makes Vero a bowl of cereal. She doesn’t eat herself, just lights a cigarette, stares tiredly at the far wall. Sometimes, the woman goes quiet for so long, Vero worries she’s dead, eyes open but unseeing.

Then Vero will climb onto the woman’s lap and hug her tight. And generally, after a moment or two, the woman will sigh. Long and sad. Like she has years, lifetimes, oceans, of sad to let out. Vero cannot make the sad go away. She just sits there and lets it envelop her, too, until eventually, the woman gets up and lights another cigarette.

Vero eats her Cheerios. She carries her bowl to the sink, rinses it carefully, places it in the drying rack.

“Can we go to the park?” Vero asks.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay, Mommy. Love you.”

“Love you, too, child. Love you, too.”

*   *   *

SHE IS GONE. Six-year-old Vero disappears. Six-year-old Vero never stood a chance. And now it is me and old and wiser Vero, back in the princess bedroom, drinking scotch out of teacups, watching the roses bleed.

“You should’ve killed me sooner,” Vero says.

I pick up my china cup, take another sip of scotch. And I remember. The woman. The park. What will happen next.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Then we sit in silence, one lost child and woman, twice returned from the dead.

*   *   *

A KNOCK ON the window. It forces me to open my eyes, get my bearings. I’m lying across the bench seat in the back of the sheriff’s SUV. My mouth tastes chalky and foul, and I’m clutching the yellow quilt against my chest. It makes a crinkling sound as I sit up, set it on the seat beside me.

The other detective, Kevin, is standing outside the vehicle, looking in. “You okay?” he asks through the window.

I nod. He pops open the door, and now both him and the sergeant in charge, Wyatt, study me.

“Can we get you something?” Wyatt asks.

“Water.” I hesitate. “I think I’ll go inside. Freshen up in the ladies’ room.”

They don’t outright exchange glances, but still take a minute to consider my request.

“I’ll walk you in,” Wyatt says at last. “Kevin can buy you a bottle of water.”

“Don’t trust me in a liquor store alone?” I ask him.

He says, “No.”

When I get out of the car, my legs are shaky. If I’m being truly honest, my head still throbs dully and the glare from the overhead parking lot lights makes me want to scream. I’m weak, faintly nauseous and completely disoriented. I have to focus on the cold to remember I’m now in New Hampshire and not in some tower bedroom. I have to study my shoes to remind myself I’m a fully functioning adult and not a child, still crammed into the back of a closet.