Chapter 5: What the Cousins Said
Daniel made the calls the next morning while I took Mia to her pediatrician.
The doctor was a calm woman named Dr.
Osei who had seen Mia since she was three weeks old.
She checked her temperature, her fingers, asked her a few gentle questions while I sat in the corner chair and tried to keep my face neutral.
"She's physically fine," Dr.
Osei said afterward, while Mia looked at a picture book on the table.
"No signs of frostbite.
Her temperature is normal."
"She was in a parking garage.
It was fifty degrees."
"I know." Dr.
Osei looked at me steadily.
"How is she otherwise?
Has she said anything about it?"
"She said she was afraid to move.
That her grandmother told her not to."
Dr.
Osei wrote something in her notes.
"I'd like to refer you to a child therapist.
Not because anything is necessarily wrong.
Just to give Mia somewhere to talk about it if she wants to."
"Yes," I said.
"Please."
On the way home, Mia asked if Grandma Patricia was in trouble.
I kept my eyes on the road.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because Daddy looked sad this morning."
"Daddy is working through some things."
Mia was quiet for a moment.
Then: "I didn't like the garage.
It smelled like cars and I couldn't see the sky."
"I know, sweetheart."
"Grandma said the other kids needed new shoes and I already had shoes."
I gripped the wheel.
"She said it in the car," Mia continued, in the same small voice she used to describe things that had happened to someone else.
"Before we got out.
She said, Mia, you stay here, the others need shoes and you already have perfectly good ones."
"And then she left."
"And then she left."
I pulled into our driveway and sat there for a moment with the engine off.
"You did nothing wrong," I said.
"Not one thing."
"I know," Mia said.
But she said it the way children say things they've decided to believe because the alternative is too heavy.
Daniel was on the back porch when we came in.
He had a notepad on his knee with names written on it.
He looked up when he saw my face.
"Tell me," I said.
He looked at Mia.
"Go pick out a movie," I told her.
"I'll make popcorn in ten minutes."
She went inside.
Daniel waited until he heard her footsteps on the stairs.
"Three families," he said.
"Cousin Beth's daughter, Emma — she was left in the car outside a grocery store for an hour and a half.
Emma was five.
Beth thought it was a one-time mistake.
She never said anything because she didn't want to cause problems."
"Who else?"
"Aunt Renee's grandson, Tyler.
He was left at a park bench while Patricia took the other kids to the ice cream stand on the other side of the park.
He was seven.
He found a stranger to help him.
The stranger walked him to Patricia.
Patricia told Renee that Tyler had wandered off."
I sat down on the step beside him.
"And the third?"
Daniel looked at his notepad.
"Karen."
"His sister Karen."
"Her son, Jamie.
Four years ago.
Before Marcus's situation.
Jamie was eight.
Patricia left him in the church hall while she took the other grandchildren to a birthday party next door.
He was there for two hours before the church secretary found him and called Karen."
"Karen knew," I said.
"Karen knew."
"She put her fork down at dinner because she knew."
"She said she confronted Mom at the time.
Mom cried.
Said she'd made a terrible mistake.
Said it would never happen again." Daniel set the notepad on the step between us.
"Karen believed her."
I looked at the list of names.
Emma.
Tyler.
Jamie.
Lily.
Mia.
Five children.
Five families who had each handled it quietly, privately, separately — each one believing they were the only time it had happened, each one choosing not to cause problems.
"She knew none of us were talking to each other," I said.
Daniel nodded slowly.
"That's why it kept working."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I looked at the notepad again.
Five names.
Five children left alone in parking garages and church halls and park benches and grocery store lots.
Five mothers and fathers who had swallowed it and moved on.
My phone was still in my pocket.
May you like
Still had last night's recording on it.
And Marcus still had the voicemail.
