Chapter 14: The Visit

I put the shoebox on the hall table and let her in.

She asked to see the kitchen, the refrigerator and Maisie's room.

I showed her all three, and she wrote on her clipboard without telling me what.

"The report came with a video," she said at the foot of the stairs. "I'd like you to watch it."

She held out her phone.

The clip was short and shaky, shot through a car window.

It showed a small girl in a yellow raincoat standing alone at the edge of a beach at dusk.

One small hand hung at her side, with the red scar across the palm in plain view.

Nobody was beside her, and the clip ended on her face turning toward the camera.

A caption had been typed across the bottom: "Five years old. Hurt. Unsupervised. Is this a fit father?"

"That was last Sunday," I said. "I was on the bench behind her with a thermos."

"I can't see a bench."

"The camera was pointed at her. It didn't turn."

"Who would film that?"

I did not have to think very long.

"My brother. He followed us here."

She looked up from the clipboard.

"The caller said she was the child's grandmother. A woman with an Ohio number."

"My mother," I said.

"I'm not telling you who called, Mr. Marsden. I'm telling you what I heard."

"I understand."

"The hand is the larger concern. The report says her father hurt it and never had it treated."

I went to the hall table and took the ER discharge papers from my jacket.

She read them standing up.

Four stitches, the date, the doctor's name, and a paragraph the nurse had typed.

Injury caused by an adult pushing the child onto broken glass, with a slap mark to the back of the hand.

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