Hearing Sarah’s voice in my head asking the last question sent chills down my spine.

She couldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t have done it. She loved her mother too much. She was just your typical sweet little girl, incapable of such evil thoughts or actions.

But, Sarah had the knowledge to accomplish the task. And, she knew that the wine in the decanter in the refrigerator was mommy’s wine.

I closed the door slowly and made my way back to and fell into the couch. I was in a mild state of shock. I had to ask Sarah if she had done it, but I didn’t want to know the answer to the question; not if she had actually done it. I felt sick to my stomach for even considering that Sarah was capable of murder.

If she had killed Catherine, deliberately, what would I do? I couldn’t turn her in. I couldn’t stop loving her. I was trapped, and I suppose the easy thing to do would have been to pretend that the notion that Sarah might have murdered Catherine had never occurred to me. But what if the police went to her school and inquired and the teacher told them about the experiment? They would come for her. I had to know if Sarah had killed her mother.

“Sarah, can you come here honey?”

I listened as Sarah fumbled with whatever toy she was playing with and then sauntered into the living room with her head down. She had tears in her eyes. I wondered if she was feeling guilty. But my paternal instincts made me want to erase her tears.

“What’s the matter honey?” I pulled her to my lap and I hugged her.

“I heard what the policeman said.” “Did what he said make you worry?”

“Yes.” She whispered into my ear, her head resting on my shoulder. I held her tight. I didn’t want to see her face as I spoke to her.

“What did he say that worries you?”

“That mommy drank the freeze…like the stuff we did for my school project.”

My heart raced. I couldn’t help myself. Tears began to trace down my cheeks.

“Why does that bother you?”

“Because they think you killed mommy with the freeze.”

“Who do you think killed mommy with the freeze?”

“I don’t know?”

“Did you ever touch the freeze?” “Yes.”

“Did you touch the freeze after I told you never to touch the freeze by yourself?”

“No daddy.” She began to raise her head but I held it to my shoulder as my tears drizzled down upon her head.

“Did you put the freeze in mommy’s wine?”

Sarah started to cry again, at first with low sobs, and then, after tearing herself away from my grasp, with blubbering whimpers as she tried to contain her emotions, and finally she broke into a balling frenzy with loud incoherent yelps, like those of a cat crying out in the night.

I held her in front of me grasping her by the shoulders. I looked at her face; at her reddened cheeks; at her still baby-smooth skin. I looked into her eyes and saw a crazy terrified confused mind.

“Did you pour the freeze into mommy’s wine?” I asked her firmly, doing my best not to shout.

“I don’t know.” She screamed at me. “Did you put the freeze in mommy’s wine?” I could hear my voice, as if listening to myself from outside of my body. My voice was deep and low and threatening.

“No! No!” She screamed, “I didn’t touch the freeze! I didn’t do it!” she sniffled, drawing a stream of runny snot up into her nostrils. “I didn’t put the freeze into mommy’s wine! I didn’t do it!” she was shaking her head violently from side to side.

I pulled her to my chest and I hugged her as hard as I could. “I know you didn’t baby. I know you didn’t!”

“I didn’t do it daddy!”

“I know baby. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I asked you, but I had to know.”

And as I held her there, I still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that she hadn’t killed Catherine. All I knew is that I hadn’t. And I knew that eventually I would be indicted. I would be publicly disgraced as the murderer of my wife; a letch; a woman killer. I would be tried and convicted in the press. I would lose my job. My neighbors would point at me and talk about me under their muffled breaths. I knew that it would not be long before I would be locked in jail, separated from Sarah forever. The lie detector test was not going to set me free. The police had my fingerprints on the decanter. They had my fingerprints on the wine glass and the bottle of antifreeze. They had Amber. They had Uncle Henry, whoever he was.

Uncle Henry! “Sarah baby?”

“What daddy?” she was still trembling and whimpering from my interrogation. I laid her back on my arm as I would an infant and looked down at her.

“It’s okay honey.” I wanted to calm her;

to let her know that my forth-coming questions were not a continuation of the former brow- beating.

“I’m not mad honey. I’m done talking about the freeze, okay?”

“Okay.” She quietly croaked, not quite convinced of my sincerity.

“Do you know Uncle Henry?”

Her eyes shined back at me in wide silence; her little lids with tiny blond lashes almost pinned themselves to her eyebrows. Her eyeballs, speckled with red hair-line tributaries, were punctuated with dilated black spheres amid grey-blue sunrays. I sat her up on my knee and I held her shoulders again. The whites of her eyes grew larger. I had asked a question she had been dreading for a long time; a box she had hoped would never be opened; a secret she had been warned about, and sworn an oath to keep.

“It’s okay. I’m not mad about it. Is it a secret?”

“Yes.” Her expression was serious. She knew the weight of the question.

“Is it a secret you had with mommy?” “Yes.”

“Do you know Uncle Henry?”

“Mommy said not to talk about Uncle

Henry. She said you would get mad.”

My stomach knotted up and tears once again began to fill my eyes. There really was an Uncle Henry. Sarah was not my flesh and blood. I looked into her eyes again, this time though I was not searching for guilt. I was searching for me. I had loved her since she was born. Since before she was born. I loved her still, flesh of my flesh or not. And no one, not Uncle Henry, not the police, not Catherine’s parents; no one was going to take her away from me.

“It’s okay. Mommy’s dead now. She won’t care now if you talk about Uncle Henry. She can’t hear you.”

Sarah’s eyes turned up and then rolled to the side as she sucked on her bottom lip,

“Uncle Henry was mommy’s friend.” She stingily volunteered.

“When did you see him?” I tried to make my voice sound cheerful and fretless but

I heard my voice quiver.

“He used to come and see us sometimes while you were at work.”

“Where did you see him?” My voice slipped as a single tear slid down my cheek and I averted my head in time to catch the tiny bead of saline with my fingertip before I returned to her studied gaze.

“Here, at our house.” Her voice grew more trusting; more casual.

“Did he go into the bedroom with mommy?” My heart was breaking. I felt the piercing intrusion of pain in my chest as though a knife had been thrust into my ribcage. I could almost feel my bleeding heart as the imaginary shank penetrated my flesh and my heart pumped like a fountain.

“No daddy. He was just her friend. He said he was really coming just to see me, not mommy.” Her eyes were sincere. She began to gush with words, like a river through a burst dam. “He just started to visit us a little while ago. At first he said that he was my daddy, but I told him that he wasn’t and that I already had a daddy, and mommy gave him a dirty look, like when I say something wrong and we’re in the grocery store. And then he told me he was my Uncle Henry and that he was just teasing about being my daddy. And he drank coffee with no sugar in it…” she grimaced, “and he talked about before when mommy took care of his wife, when she was sick, and then she died, and then mommy didn’t come over after that. And Uncle Henry is old and he has hair growing out of his ears.”