Meredith

MEREDITH

11 YEARS BEFORE

May

“I have a confession to make,” Charlotte says. She’s on the other end of my phone. Her tone is somber. It’s evening. Josh and the kids have been home for hours. They’re in the next room, watching TV together on the sofa. Josh has a book open on his lap, but he’s laughing at the TV. It warms my heart, that a thirty-six-year-old man can find humor in preschool TV.

Charlotte says, “Something happened,” and there’s the sense that she knows what Bea and I did. I go into a flat spin. I’m losing control. I’m in the kitchen when it happens. I’ve just finished washing dishes and wiping down the table. I pull out a chair and sink into it.

“What’s that?” I ask. I’m short of breath. My heart pounds in my chest.

She says, “Someone has been picking on Leo,” before her voice cracks and she comes apart at the seams, saying, “Oh God, Meredith, I’m so sorry. I feel awful about it. I should have known.”

My mind doesn’t change course so quickly.

“How would you have known?”

“It’s my job to know these things. Especially after you called about the bruise. I should have paid more attention after that. I should have put more stock into what you said, but instead I cast it off as kids being kids. I’m so sorry, Meredith. I wish I’d known sooner that he was being picked on.”

“Picked on how?” I ask, still breathless. “And by whom?”

“Brody Parker,” she says.

The name doesn’t ring a bell. “What did this boy do to Leo?”

“Well,” she says, chastened. “I’m ashamed to admit this, Meredith. I hope you’ll forgive me, but this afternoon he locked Leo in the outdoor toy chest.”

I picture our own plastic toy chest. It’s maybe two feet high by two feet wide by three feet long. Leo, at his last exam, was thirty-eight inches tall. If Charlotte’s toy chest is about the same size as ours, that means Leo’s little legs wouldn’t have been able to stretch fully out inside it. He would have had to bend at the knees. But is there enough width inside the toy chest for that? And what about the toys inside it? Was he lying on them, too, or did this Brody Parker have the decency to remove those before forcing Leo in?

My mind is racing. But all I can say is, “It’s raining outside, Charlotte. They were playing outside?”

“Brody asked if they could get the Nerf guns and bring them in. I said yes, because with all this rain, we’re running out of things to do. Brody asked if Leo could help him carry the guns back in. I said yes. Then one of the toddlers wet herself, and I got all caught up in changing and washing her clothes. I didn’t know that Leo hadn’t come back in. Brody,” she says by way of explanation, “goes to the elementary school. We walk and pick him up, same as we do Delilah. We didn’t get home until close to three-thirty, and then the kids wanted a snack before they played, so...” Her voice drifts. She’s holding something back.

“What are you saying, Charlotte?” I ask.

“It was less than an hour that he had Leo locked inside that chest of mine,” and I gasp, imagining Leo trapped in a dark, cold toy chest all alone for an hour.

“What grade is Brody Parker in?” I ask, imagining him as a kindergartener, like Delilah.

“Fifth,” Charlotte says. This would make him ten or eleven. What kind of eleven-year-old boy picks on a four-year-old? I wonder if Leo was lured into that toy chest, if he was double-dog dared, or if this little hellion picked Leo up and forced him in.

“Why wouldn’t Leo just get out of the chest?” I ask. Leo may be shy, but he’s a capable boy. He could have just climbed out.

“It has a lock on it.”

“Dear God,” I say, pressing a hand to my mouth. I wonder if there are air holes in that toy chest, how much oxygen it holds. And then, because I can’t get her off my mind for anything, I go back to Shelby in the trunk, and whether she was dead before we put her in, or if she died inside.

Charlotte says, “When it came time to clean up, I realized he was missing. Leo is always the first to clean up. He’s such a good boy, Meredith. But Leo’s puzzle never got put away, and that’s when I knew something terrible had happened. I want you to know, I’ve already called Brody’s mother. I told her he’s not welcome here anymore.”