The name on the screen was Carolyn Sherwood. Carolyn lived next door to us in Minneapolis, a retired school librarian who brought us zucchini bread every August and complained if anyone left trash cans out past Tuesday. She did not call after midnight.
“James, I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. Her voice was shaking.
“What’s wrong, Carolyn?” I sat up, kicking the hotel duvet off my legs.
“Your daughter is sitting in your driveway,” she said. “Sarah. She has blood all over her. She’s alone. It’s midnight.”
For one second, my brain refused to line those words up. Sarah was eight years old. She slept in her pink floral pajamas with her stuffed rabbit.
“What do you mean, blood?” I asked.
“I mean blood, James. On her forehead, her arm, her pajamas. I asked her what happened, and she just stared at me. Should I call the police?”
The hotel lobby behind my door smelled like lemon cleaner and burnt coffee. A couple laughed near the brass elevator doors. My life had still been normal then.
“Stay with her,” I said. “Don’t move. I’m calling Melissa right now.”
I hung up and tapped my wife’s name. Melissa did not answer. Not the first call. Not the fifth. Not the twentieth.
Melissa always kept her phone within reach. She slept with it charging on the nightstand. She checked it while brushing her teeth and while making coffee.
She did not miss calls by accident. By the time I dialed my mother-in-law, my hands were shaking so badly I dropped the phone on the carpet.
Norma Richard answered on the fourth ring. Her voice sounded raspy and unbothered.
“James,” she said, as if I had interrupted her tea.
“Norma, where is Sarah? What happened at my house?”
There was a pause. Not confusion. Not panic. A pause like she was deciding how much I deserved to know.
Then she said, “Oh, James. She’s not our problem anymore.”
The room tilted. “She is eight years old,” I shouted.
Norma sighed. “You should speak to Melissa.”
“Melissa won’t answer.”
“That is between you and your wife.” Then she hung up.
I do not remember pulling my suitcase out of the closet. I only remember standing in the middle of the hotel room with the phone hot against my palm.
Not our problem anymore. My daughter was sitting outside in the dark, bleeding, and her grandmother had dismissed her like a piece of junk left on the curb.
