Chapter 3: What Linda Saw
I told Meliora to go to the bedroom.
She laughed — actually laughed — and said she wasn't going anywhere.
"This is my house too."
"Then sit down and don't speak."
She looked at Kerensa, then at me, and something in my voice must have landed differently than before, because she sat.
I carried Kerensa to the kitchen and set her on the counter so we were eye level.
Her left side was bare almost to the scalp.
The right side still had her curls.
She looked lopsided and small and she kept touching the bare patch like she was checking if it was real.
"Does it hurt anywhere?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Did she touch you anywhere else?"
She shook her head again, but her eyes went sideways.
Not to the door.
To the floor.
"Kerensa."
"She pulled my arm," she said quietly.
"When I tried to run."
I kept my face still.
"Okay.
Thank you for telling me."
I texted Linda back: *Can you come over?*
Her reply came in under a minute: *Already on my way.*
Linda was sixty-two, retired, and had lived next door for eleven years.
She brought a casserole when my mother passed and remembered Kerensa's birthday without being reminded.
She was not a dramatic woman.
She did not exaggerate.
She knocked twice and I let her in.
She looked at Kerensa's head and her expression didn't change, but her jaw tightened.
"How long?" I asked.
"Sit down," she said.
"Linda."
"Sit down, Owen.
Please."
I sat.
Kerensa climbed into my lap and pressed her face against my chest.
Linda pulled out a chair across from me.
She folded her hands on the table the way people do when they're about to say something they've been holding too long.
"The first time I noticed was about four months ago," she said.
"I was in my garden.
I heard Kerensa crying — not the normal kind, the kind that sounds like she was trying not to be heard.
I looked up and saw her standing at your back window."
"Four months ago."
"I told myself it was nothing.
Kids cry." She looked at her hands.
"Then about six weeks later I was taking my bins out and I heard her again.
Different sound that time.
More scared than sad." She paused.
"I looked through the gap in the fence.
Meliora had her by the wrist.
Kerensa was trying to pull away and Meliora just — held on.
Didn't yell.
Didn't say anything.
Just held on until Kerensa stopped pulling."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I almost did.
Three times." Linda looked up.
"But I didn't know what I'd actually seen.
I didn't want to be wrong.
I didn't want to cause trouble in your marriage if it was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing."
"No," she said.
"It wasn't."
Meliora's voice came from the doorway.
"This is unbelievable."
Neither of us had heard her get up.
"You're sitting here letting this woman tell stories about me based on what she thinks she saw through a fence?"
"Go back to the bedroom, Meliora."
"I'm not a child, Owen."
"No," I said.
"You're not.
So act like it and go back to the bedroom before I call someone who will make you."
Her eyes went to Linda.
Then to Kerensa.
Then back to me.
She turned and walked down the hall.
The bedroom door didn't slam.
That was almost worse — the quiet click of it closing like none of this mattered enough for anger.
Linda reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
May you like
"There's one more thing," she said.
"I took a video."
