“So maybe just after five,” she says. There is a split in the wood veneer; she can see the particleboard beneath. She digs her fingernail against the gap, pressing down, feeling the fake wood give.
“Why did you go inside?” Ellis asks.
“I had to pee,” she says, and her cheeks heat up.
“And what happened when you went back into the house?” he asks.
“I used the bathroom. The one downstairs,” she says.
“Your mother was in the hall. Not far away.”
She nods convulsively. “I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to wake anyone up,” she says. “I didn’t see her until—until—” A sudden wave of queasiness rolls through her, and she whines, high-pitched, bending forward on herself.
“Hey, easy there,” Ellis says, reaching across the table to touch her shoulder. She whips away from him. She doesn’t want to be touched. His eyes crinkle again, but there’s no warmth in them. “You saw her when you came out of the bathroom?”
“Yes,” she whispers. Hadley is watching her intently. She’s certain she’s made a mistake already.
“What did you do then, Daphne?” Ellis prompts.
“I screamed, I think,” she says. “I ran over to her, and I called for my dad. And then I turned around and I saw him, too. Then Emma and Juliette were there. Juliette tried to help Mom but Emma stopped her, because she could tell—she didn’t think we should touch anything.”
“You could tell they were dead,” Ellis says.
She nods. “You could see things. In Daddy’s head.” She doesn’t mean to use the word, babyish, juvenile. She’s twelve, not four. But Ellis’s face softens.
“Look. You can see his brain.” A finger reaching toward the hole, smacked away.
She lets the shudder that she has been holding back ripple over her shoulders and pulls her knees to her chest. She likes to imagine that she can fold herself in half and in half again, over and over until she is a tiny speck drifting. Until she is nothing at all.
“And that’s when Emma called 911?” Ellis asks.
“Maybe not right away?” she ventures.
“Take your time,” he reminds her.
Daphne swallows, nods. “Juliette was freaking out. Emma was trying to calm her down. So not right away.”
“You weren’t freaking out?” he asks, eyebrows raising.
“Of course I was,” she says quickly. Too quickly. She sees the momentary softness hardening again. She doesn’t know how to act. What to say. What does a normal person do, when they find their parents dead? When they see bits of their father’s brain on the rug? She has no idea. She feels like an alien, every word and inflection skewed and wrong.
“So then you called 911,” Ellis says.
“Emma did.”
“That’s right. Emma called 911.” A nod. “And we pretty much know the story after that, don’t we?”
She doesn’t like that he calls it a story.
Ellis shifts a bit. His fingertips rest against the table. She looks over at the bag, inhaling the grease smell. He hasn’t said she can’t have it. He hasn’t said she can. He notices her looking, and his hand flattens against the table.
“Daphne, let’s go back a moment.” He uses her name a lot, she thinks. Like he wants it to sound like he knows her. “Now, you and your sisters spent the night in the tree house. And you didn’t hear anything from the house? Gunshots?”
“I don’t think so?” she says. “I woke up a few times, but I don’t remember it being because of a noise.”
“And you were up there all night. All three of you,” Hadley says intently, staring straight at her.
“Like I told you,” Daphne says, and can’t suppress the irritated snap to her words.
Ellis sighs. “That is what you told us,” he concedes. “But, Daphne, we know that isn’t true.”
4
DAPHNE
Now
Emma was going back to the house.
Daphne sat on the porch, a crocheted blanket around her shoulders, and watched a barn cat stalk purposefully across the yard. She liked this time of day. That liminal space between the end of work and the start of sleep, the few minutes when obligation eased enough to steal a moment to herself. A moment to take a breath.
In a way, the last fourteen years had been an in-between time like this. A rest. But if Emma was going back to the house, surely that couldn’t last.
“Daphne?”