Chapter 2: Morning Paper
By eight o’clock a patrol officer had taken preliminary photos of Lucas’s arms in the kitchen light, with my consent and Lucas’s, and a card for a detective in family violence was on the table beside the pancake plate.
I packed a bag for my son while he showered again—hot water, clean towel, no timer set by anyone else. We left the house together. I did not lock Candice out yet; I locked nothing that would tip a phone alert before the report was fully filed. We checked into an extended-stay near the river with two beds and a door that bolted. Lucas slept for three hours straight. I sat in the chair and uploaded the nightstand photos to a cloud folder shared only with the attorney, Mara Ellison, who had answered my dawn call with the flat competence of someone who had seen “WIDOWS” folders under other names.
“Do not confront her alone,” Mara said. “Do not return the originals to her hands. Bring Lucas to the pediatric forensic appointment I’ve requested. Keep recording logs of any contact.”
Candice’s name lit my phone at 11:02 a.m.—a cheerful text about Miami heat and a photo of a beach umbrella. I screenshotted it, did not reply, and forwarded it to Mara. Another text asked whether Lucas had finished the laundry. I felt my jaw ache from holding still. Screenshot. Forward.
At the clinic in the afternoon, a nurse documented every mark with a patience that made Lucas’s shoulders drop a fraction. He answered questions in the same list-voice from the kitchen. I stayed in the room when he wanted me and stepped out when he didn’t. The report would travel. So would I.
That night in the hotel he asked if he was in trouble for telling. I said the only people in trouble were the ones who had made a child wash clothes in the dark. He cried then—finally—into a hotel pillow while I sat on the edge of the bed and kept watch the way I had kept watch over loads that could shift on a grade. When he slept, I opened the WIDOWS scans again and forced myself to read every line.
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Clara’s death had not only left a hole in our house.
It had left a method for someone who collected holes.
