Courtney
My vision is blurred. Spots dance before my eyes, which have become accustomed to the dimness of the house, making them more
sensitive to the light that pours in the open door all of a sudden.
My heart is in my throat. It beats so hard my blood pressure drops. My ears feel clogged, which makes it hard to hear anything
but the beating of my own heart.
I throw my hands up in the air, flinching in anticipation of the gun going off. I put them in front of my face and brace myself
for the searing pain of being shot.
I imagine that.
I imagine what it would feel like to be shot, to have bullets enter me.
“Please,” I beg, my voice desperate. “Please don’t shoot. Please don’t hurt me.”
I press my eyes shut tight. On the other side of the room, I picture Daniel Clarke’s face behind the gun, which I remember
as sharp and angular from that day I saw him at the pool with Reese, with knitted, bushy eyebrows and long, unkempt hair.
I imagine the intensity of his eyes, a vein on his forehead engorged.
When he speaks, the voice is unexpected and familiar.
“Mrs. Gray,” he says, and at first I’m so taken aback by the sound of my name that my reaction is delayed. My brain stops working, processing.
How does he know my name?
Slowly, I open my eyes. I realize that the man in the room with me is not Daniel Clarke.
It’s Detective Evans, who stands just inside the open door, pointing his gun at me.
“Detective Evans? Wh-what are you doing here?”
“A neighbor called,” he says, his voice controlled, sedate, unlike mine. He doesn’t lower his weapon. “They said they saw
someone trespassing on Mr. Clarke’s property, entering his home.” He pauses, throwing the question back at me. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Gray?”
His expression is stony and cold in a way I’ve never seen. It takes a minute for him to lower his gun, and even when he does,
it’s still slow, deliberate.
My knees buckle. I stumble backward in relief. I sag against a wall, letting it support me. My muscles feel heavy and weak.
Tears well in my eyes and I fight them, not wanting to cry in front of Detective Evans or the other officers who come into
the house behind him with their guns also drawn, lowering them at Detective Evans’s request.
“I asked: What are you doing here, Mrs. Gray?”
“I’m looking for Reese.”
“This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
It takes effort, but I push myself up off the wall. “I’m looking for my niece,” I say again, more sure this time, as if looking
for Reese gives me the authority to break into someone’s home.
“And so are we,” he says. “You have to trust us, Mrs. Gray. You have to let us do our jobs. You can’t just be breaking into
people’s homes on a hunch.” He pauses, finally returning his gun into its holster, holding my eyes the entire time. “I could
arrest you for trespassing, you know.”
“Then do it,” I say, daring him, watching for a reaction. But Detective Evans does nothing, holding my gaze. “Her sweatshirt is here,” I tell him. “He has her.”
“A sweatshirt alone is not incriminating. It doesn’t mean anything. We don’t know how it got here. Maybe she gave it to him.
Maybe she left it in his car and he brought it inside for safekeeping. You said they were hanging out. So maybe she was here.
It doesn’t mean he did something to hurt her. It doesn’t mean he knows where she is.”
My voice tightens as I say, “There’s blood on it,” and for the first time, I get a reaction from him, something subtle but
noticeable. A shifting of his body weight.
“Where is the sweatshirt?”
“Here,” I say, motioning to it, leaving the sweatshirt where it is. “I found it in the bedroom. The blood,” I tell him, “is
on the sleeve. It’s right there,” I say, because the blood is visible without even having to touch the sweatshirt. “Reese
is hurt. He did something to her,” I say, watching as one of the other officers slips his hands into gloves and moves past
me for the shirt, lifting it and showing the blood to Detective Evans, who nods, telling him to bag it.
He says to me, “We don’t know for sure that the blood is hers, Mrs. Gray. We can’t just assume.”
“Of course it’s hers. Who else’s could it be?” I ask, but even as I do, I know the answer. Bile rises up inside of me and
I press a hand to my mouth. I see that baseball bat in my mind’s eye. I see it covered with blood. I see it in Reese’s hands,
the bat bloodied before she administered another blow to Emily, lying unconscious on the floor, drops of blood jettisoning
through the air and onto the sleeve of her shirt.
“Here’s the problem with breaking in to find evidence,” he says, and I flush with shame, feeling embarrassed by the incongruity of it, because of his youth, because he could be twenty years younger than me, and yet in a position of such authority that I feel inferior, like a child.
“If Mr. Clarke did something to hurt your family and this sweatshirt is proof, a judge could say that it’s inadmissible because of the way it was obtained.
The defense could claim you planted that sweatshirt here to set Mr. Clarke up. That you put the blood on it.”
“I didn’t,” I assert.
“I didn’t say that you did. I’m just trying to tell you why breaking in to obtain evidence might be problematic, in addition
to the fact that it’s illegal. You have to trust me, Mrs. Gray. I am trying to find your niece. I am trying to figure out
who killed your family. You have to let me do my job and not do anything that’s going to impede in this investigation.”
I nod, feeling suddenly so tired and defeated that I start to break down. The rancid smell of rotting meat in the house makes
me think of bloat and of maggots as I picture Emily’s and Nolan’s hollowed-out bodies getting ravaged by maggots. The temperature
in the house seems to rise all of a sudden too, so that I’m overwhelmingly hot.
Detective Evans notices. “Is everything alright?” he asks, and this time, his tone has changed.
I pluck at my shirt. I lift it from the skin so that it billows, though there is no air in the house to get in. “It’s so hot
in here. And that smell . . .”
“Why don’t we go outside and get some fresh air,” he suggests, and I nod, grateful. I follow him through the open front door
and outside, where he says, his voice far more lenient now, “We’ll run some tests on the shirt and see if we can determine
who the blood belongs to. Maybe it’s hers and maybe—”
He turns to face me. At the same time, the wind rushes me, blowing my hair back. The lighting is better outside too so that,
for the first time, he sees the bruising on my cheek.
He becomes still.
“You want to tell me what happened?” he asks.
The answer is a resounding no, I don’t want to tell him what happened. But I can see on his face that it isn’t so much a question
as it is a command.
Tell me what happened.
I stay quiet, keeping it to myself.
“Mrs. Gray?”
“It’s nothing. It’s not what you think.”
Detective Evans watches me for a minute. He throws a glance to the other officers, saying, “I think we’re done here. You two
can go. Take that back to the station and log it,” about Reese’s sweatshirt. He watches as they head to their squad car, parked
at the end of the drive behind mine, and pull away.
Only when they’re gone does Detective Evans turn to me. He lowers his guard. His features soften, the taut lines on his forehead
relaxing. “I grew up,” he says slowly, “with a father who had a temper. He hit things, walls and doors mostly, but every now
and then my mom would be on the receiving end of his rage.”
My words are a whisper. “It’s not like that. It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. My husband didn’t do this to me.”
“Then who did?” When I say nothing, he says gently, “There are fingerprints on your face. Someone did this to you, Mrs. Gray.
If not your husband, then who?” He watches me closely, his eyes reading mine. He cocks his head, the wind moving his hair.
Mosquitoes circle our heads. One lands on his arm and he kills it with his hand. “Was it Wyatt?”
My face gives me away.
“It was Wyatt, wasn’t it?”
“You can’t get him in trouble. Please. He didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“He was sleepwalking. He woke up in the middle of the night, looking for his lunch. He was so worried about being late to
school because he couldn’t find his lunch. I tried to wake him, to get him back in bed. He lashed out, because he was having
a dream someone was trying to kidnap him and he fought back. He was asleep. He didn’t mean to hit me.”
“He thought you were this kidnapper?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid, Mrs. Gray?”
I hesitate because the question takes me by surprise. “Of course I am,” I say. “Someone killed my brother and sister-in-law.
Someone has my niece. Of course I’m afraid. I’m fucking terrified. Shouldn’t I be?”
“But are you afraid of Wyatt?” he asks. “Do you feel unsafe living with him?”
Do I feel unsafe living with Wyatt?
“You can tell me, Mrs. Gray,” he says when I hesitate, reaching out to touch my shoulder. He lowers his gaze. “It’s my job
to protect you, to keep you safe.” I look up. I meet his eye, feeling all of a sudden like I could cry.
It’s my job to protect you.
Elliott hasn’t said as much to me, though that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t, or that he’s not trying to protect me. But when Detective
Evans says it, I believe it.
After what Wyatt did last night, we slept with the bedroom door closed and locked. And then this morning, I tiptoed around,
afraid to wake him before anyone else was up to protect me from him. Because I’m afraid. Because yes, I feel unsafe living
with him.
But I say, “No,” because I don’t know what would happen to Wyatt if I confessed to Detective Evans that I was afraid of him.
“I told you that it was an accident. He didn’t mean to do it.”
Detective Evans nods, thoughtful at first, letting go of my shoulder and bringing his arm back to his side. “You said that when he was sleepwalking, he was worried about his missing lunch and about being late to school?”
I nod, remembering the way Wyatt spoke to me last night, the words he used. Are you fucking deaf? I’m going to kill you if I’m late for school.
I say, “He was looking for his lunch in the refrigerator, but it wasn’t there.”
Seconds pass. Detective Evans is quiet, contemplative, as if processing what I’ve said, trying to imagine Wyatt searching
the refrigerator shelves in the middle of the night, thrusting other items aside to search for a lunch that isn’t there.
He asks, “Doesn’t it stand to reason then that if he was dreaming about being late to school, he was not dreaming about an
intruder in your cottage?”
His questions knock the wind from my lungs.
Was Wyatt dreaming about a missing lunch? Or was he dreaming about an intruder?
Or was he dreaming about nothing at all?
Was he awake? Was he only pretending to be asleep?
Before I can find the words to respond, Detective Evans says, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
“What’s that?” I ask, breathless.
“While we were searching the cottage the other day, there’s something we didn’t find.”
“What?”
“Benadryl.”
My first instinct is to protect Wyatt, to come to his defense. “Maybe it wasn’t in a bottle,” I suggest. “Maybe it was a tablet,
in a blister pack.”
“We looked, Mrs. Gray, but we didn’t find a blister pack either. Neither a bottle nor a blister pack.”
“Wyatt wouldn’t lie, if that’s what you’re suggesting.
Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe Emily gave him something else for his allergies,” I say, but even as I do, I know as good as anyone that few things would have had the same sedative effect as Benadryl, making it possible for him to sleep through what happened without waking up.
Maybe Wyatt is lying after all.
There are mosquitoes beside my car. Dark clouds of them float on and around the doors and windows so that I don’t know how
I’ll get inside the car without letting them in.
As I reach for the door handle, another car passes by on the street, catching my attention, and I turn to look as the car
drives past. As I gaze toward the street, a familiar green catches my eye, visible through a small break in the trees.
My hand falls away from the car’s door handle and I find myself drifting to the end of the driveway, where visibility is better,
where I can see all the way across the street to the house on the other side.
The green is sage-like compared to the green of the trees. Still, in real life, the color is more vivid than in Sam Matthew’s
Polaroids, though the house and the shed look more aged at the same time. The Welcome wreath is gone, removed from the door, and I imagine a rusty nail left in its place. The window boxes sit empty except for
weeds.
A heavy feeling fills my whole body. There is a tightness in my chest. I tune out everything else around me—the bite of mosquitoes,
the hushed, hard-to-hear sound of Detective Evans’s voice speaking to me from behind, the cool breeze blowing through the
trees and upsetting the leaves—focusing only on the shed.
The green shed.
I gravitate toward it. Without meaning to, I leave the driveway and stray into the street, where another passing car nearly hits me, and I feel Detective Evans’s hand on my elbow, pulling me back.
“Mrs. Gray? Is something wrong, Mrs. Gray?”
I can’t respond. I’m lost in thought, wondering if Kylie’s friend still lives there, wondering if it’s only a coincidence
that Daniel Clarke lives in the house across the street from the place where Kylie was last seen.