Chapter 13: The Night She Slept Through
The house went quiet in a way it hadn't in months.
She was gone. Her car had backed out of the driveway twenty minutes earlier and her taillights had swept across the dining wall and then were gone. I stood at the front door after and turned both locks, the deadbolt and the handle, and tested them. Then I checked the back door off the kitchen and the side door to the laundry room. All locked.
My daughter had finally fallen asleep on her bed with her bunny pressed against her chest. The cream fur was matted where she'd clutched it all night, the pink ribbon twisted. I didn't move it. I sat on the floor beside her bed with my back against the wall and watched the baby monitor on my phone.
The camera feed was still live. I kept it open on the kitchen counter earlier while I made her warm milk, the little green light in the corner blinking. LOCATION_X looked empty from that angle now, the pendant lamp over the dining table still glowing, the glassware catching light. I left it running. I wanted to see that empty room stay empty.
I didn't turn the house lights off all the way. I left the hallway light on low, the one she liked, and her closet light cracked an inch so a thin line fell across her rug.
Around one-thirty she woke up crying.
It wasn't loud at first. Just a whimper, then a sharp inhale. I was already standing before she called out. She sat straight up in bed, eyes wide, bunny still clutched tight, tears already running.
"Daddy?" she said.
I was there. I sat on the edge of her mattress and didn't pull her toward me until she reached.
"I've got you," I said. "I'm right here."
She shook against me. Her hair was damp at the temples. "Don't leave," she whispered.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said. I kept my voice low and steady. I could feel my own breathing and I tried to keep it even so she could feel it too. "This is your room. You're safe in your room. I'm right here outside your door all night."
She pulled back just enough to look at my face. Her eyes searched mine the way they had at the dining table.
"I believe you," I told her. Those were the words I'd owed her earlier and hadn't said fast enough. I said them now so there was no gap. "I believe you. What you told me was true. I saw it."
She nodded once, hard, and buried her face again. Her grip on the bunny never loosened.
We stayed like that for a long time. I rubbed her back in a slow circle the way she liked when she was smaller. Her crying softened into those hitched breaths kids do after. I didn't tell her to stop crying. I just let her.
When she was calm, I got her water from the pink cup on her nightstand. She drank and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Do you want me to stay until you fall back asleep?" I asked.
She nodded.
I lay on the floor again, my hand resting on the edge of her bed where she could see it. She reached out and put her small hand on top of mine. The monitor on the dresser showed the dark hallway, still and quiet.
After she drifted off a second time, I didn't sleep. I sat in that hallway light and made the decisions I'd been putting off until she was safe enough to not hear them.
I texted my sister. I kept it short and factual. I told her what had happened, that the woman who'd been staying with us was no longer in the house, that I had video and photos and a report already started. I told her I needed her to know in case my daughter needed somewhere to go or someone to call. She replied within two minutes: I'm coming in the morning. Don't worry about anything else tonight.
I called the locksmith's voicemail and left a message for first thing in the morning. Change every exterior lock, same key. I said the house was in town, on the residential street behind the diner, anyone local would know it. I wanted new keys cut by noon.
And I decided to keep the camera.
For a while that night I'd thought about ripping it off the laundry room wall, about not wanting any more video of my house. But watching that empty dining room on my phone, knowing I could check it from anywhere, had let me breathe for the first time since she'd pointed toward that room and said check the camera, daddy. I wasn't going to take down the thing that had told the truth when a person hadn't. I moved the app to the front screen of my phone and left notifications on for motion.
May you like
Around three, my daughter made a small sound again but didn't wake. I adjusted her blanket, tucked it around the bunny too, and she settled. I stayed against the wall and watched the hallway light hum softly. The house was still quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet now. Not the held-breath quiet from before. Just night quiet.
I wasn't fixed. I knew that. I knew tomorrow I'd be in the county office with a folder and I'd have to say it all out loud again to someone in a uniform. But tonight, for the first time since the dining table, my daughter had fallen back asleep and stayed asleep, and I was right where I'd told her I'd be.
