Chapter 5: The Lawn

Two patrol cars pulled up with their lights turning and no sirens.

Porch lights came on all down Fairmount Boulevard.

My mother had taken me by the elbow and walked me out to the lawn, because she wanted the officers to see me before they saw anything else.

"She's very fragile," she told the first one. "Please don't frighten her."

He was young, with a notebook, and he looked at Callie first.

Callie sat on the front step with a dish towel against her head, shivering, and the blood in her hair shone black.

Benton knelt beside her with his hand on her back.

"What happened here?" the officer asked.

"My sister pushed me down the steps," Callie said. "I only wanted her to stay. She tried to take Mom's car."

"Ma'am?" He turned to me. "Did you push her?"

"No."

"Did you try to take the car?"

"Yes," I said. "I was trying to leave the house."

"Why?"

I looked at the lawn.

The neighbours had come out in coats over their pyjamas, one by one, and stood along the hedge.

A man held his phone up with the light on.

A woman in a green robe was filming too, with both hands.

I had not stood in front of that many people in seven years, and they were all waiting for me to speak.

My mother's fingers tightened on my arm.

"Willa," she said very quietly. "Think."

I thought.

I thought about Dray's office and the way a story told to a room becomes a different thing from a story told to one man.

"My name is Willa Lowry," I said, loud enough for the hedge. "I went missing seven years ago. Some of you put up the posters."

The woman in the green robe lowered her phone and raised it again.

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