Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Besides, she treated him like a piece of shit last night.
“All right.” I return to the chair I was sitting in. “Now tell me about the night Griffin was taken. You say you put a lock on her window. And I assume the doors were locked.”
“Yes.”
“When did you find out she was missing?”
“The next morning when we went into her room.”
“How was she that night when she went to bed?”
“She had only been back in her room for a few nights at that point. She used to cry herself to sleep, scared. And she…”
“She what?”
She inhales slowly. “She missed her brother, if you must know. There was this set of pajamas she would wear—they were her favorite, a Christmas gift from Dragon. Pink with rainbows. From the moment he left, they were the only pair of pajamas she would wear to bed.”
She missed her brother.
So many things I could say to that, but I hold myself in check.
“So she had finally gone back to her own room.”
“Yes. Felix and I tried to get her to move into Dragon’s room, but she wouldn’t. She kept saying it was Dragon’s room, and she wanted him to come back.”
“Did you think about going to get Dragon?”
She frowns. “Not at that point, no. We still thought he had attacked his sister.”
I draw a breath again, holding my temper. “I see. What did you find the next morning, after Griffin disappeared?”
“The window was open, as it was the first time.”
“What about the lock?”
She closes her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Is it possible you forgot to lock the window?”
She snaps her head toward me. “Of course not!”
But she’s lying. She looks at her lap, slides her fingers over the rim of her coffee cup.
She’s lying because she didn’t think she had to lock the window. At that point, she still thought Dragon was the one who had hurt Griffin.
“Was there any blood on the sheets?”
“Not that time, no.”
“So the first time, whoever came in cut Griffin on the face and the abdomen, correct?”
“Yes.” Her lip trembles. “That beautiful face of hers had a scar.”
“But the next time, she wasn’t cut?”
She shrugs. “We didn’t find any blood. Neither did the forensic investigators.” Her face darkens. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t cut.”
I nod. “That’s true enough. What did you do then?”
“We called the police. And they interrogated us, as if we were the criminals.”
“Did you tell them that you had another child?”
“They found out. They used it as an excuse to bludgeon us with questions. If we got rid of one child, why wouldn’t we get rid of another?”
“I see.”
I keep my fists from clenching. Dealing with this woman is more difficult than I anticipated. She’s distant. But I can understand that.
But the way she speaks about how the police officers treated her… Of course they had questions about what happened to Dragon.
“Did you call the police the first time Griffin was attacked?”
“No.”
“Because you assumed Dragon had done it.”
She blinks. “Yes.”
“What did you do that time?”
“We took Griffin to the hospital, of course, and the people at the ER wanted to call the police. We wouldn’t allow it. We said our son was responsible.”
“And where was Dragon when you took Griffin to the hospital?”
“I don’t know,” she scoffs. “How am I supposed to remember all of this? It was over twenty years ago.”
I shake my head. How can this woman not remember the day her child was attacked? How can she not remember what she did with her other child?
“Did you leave Dragon at home alone?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Maybe one of you stayed home with Dragon while the other took Griffin to the ER?”
She presses her lips together. “No. We both went to the ER.”
“And no one asked you where your other child was?”
“We had to sit and talk to a social worker. The hospital insisted on that if we weren’t going to call the police.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Her. It was a woman. We told her what happened. That Dragon had gotten a knife from the kitchen and had attacked his sister. She’s the one who suggested Dragon be removed from the home.”
I cock my head. “It wasn’t your idea?”
“No, it wasn’t. But after we had a few days to think about it, we agreed with her.”
“Do you remember that person’s name?”
“No. I barely remember her face.” She frowns, gazing out the window of the mobile home. “That time of my life is such a blur.”
I can’t help wondering if Dragon’s parents were on drugs at that point. The mother is obviously a chain smoker—I can tell from the yellow tint on every surface of the trailer, as well as from the crackly tone of her voice. Perhaps she and Dragon’s father were taking something harder during this time in their lives—something that would have impaired their judgment. Make them think that their sweet little boy who had done nothing but love his baby sister could do something so terrible to her. And then be so easily swayed by a single social worker’s suggestion to remove their son from their lives entirely, despite mountains of evidence that it was someone else’s doing.