Chapter 2 - The Red Clay of Blackwater Creek
By 2:15 a.m., the rain had softened into a thick, low mist that hung over the pines lining the road out to the county hospital.
Ethan and I sat on the rear vinyl bench of Patrol Car 104. The plastic heater blew dry, hot air over our ankles, smelling of hot plastic and wet rubber mats. A blue-and-white hospital blanket was wrapped around both of our shoulders, its wool itching my neck, but I refused to let it slip off because Ethan was shivering so hard his teeth clicked together every few seconds.
Outside the fogged window, the hospital's emergency bay lights glowed like yellow moons through the steam.
Officer Vance was standing near the double automatic doors, speaking to a tall woman in a dark gray trench coat who held a clipboard beneath a wide black umbrella. Every few seconds, Vance would point toward our car, then shake his head slowly, his jaw set in a hard, straight line.
"Where is Dad going?" Ethan asked, his small hands clutching a cold juice box the emergency room nurse had given him thirty minutes ago. He hadn't poked the straw through the foil circle yet. He just stared at the picture of the cartoon apple on the front. "Did the police take him to his job?"
"Dad isn't at work, Ethan," I said softly. My voice sounded flat, strange to my own ears, as if someone else were speaking through my chest. "He's... he's talking to the officers."
"When is Mom coming out?" he asked again. He had asked the same question six times since the ambulance pulled away from our driveway with its blue lights flashing silent patterns against the rain-slicked trees. "She said my yellow socks were in the dryer."
I couldn't look at him. I looked at the rain drops running down the thick glass of the patrol car door instead. Each drop caught the red flash of the hospital's roof sign, turning into tiny drops of blood that slid down toward the rubber seal at the bottom.
The car door opened, bringing in a sharp draft of wet night air.
Officer Hayes slid into the front seat, turning around so she could see us over the headrest. She had taken off her heavy tactical belt, resting it on the floorboards near the gear shift. Without the radio and holster, she looked smaller, like a teacher or an aunt, though her eyes were ringed with dark red circles from the rain and wind.
"Chloe," she said gently, reaching out a hand to touch my blanketed knee. "Your uncle Thomas is on his way from Vancouver. He's driving as fast as he can through the mountain pass."
Uncle Thomas was Mom's older brother. He was a carpenter who lived in a small house near the river, surrounded by stacks of cedar boards and the smell of pine shavings. He came to see us twice a year, always bringing us wooden toys he had carved in his shop during the winter. He didn't like Dad. Whenever Dad entered the room, Uncle Thomas would stop talking, pick up his mug of coffee, and stand out on the back porch until Dad went upstairs.
"Is Mom staying here?" I asked. My fingers tightened in the itchy wool blanket. "The doctor with the green coat said her heart was very tired."
Officer Hayes looked down at her hands for two long seconds. Her fingernails were short, trimmed clean, with tiny spots of dark mud stuck beneath the edges from our driveway.
"The doctors are doing everything they can, Chloe," she said softly. Her voice dropped into that low, honest tone that meant something terrible was being hidden behind soft words. "Your mother took a very bad blow to her head. She... she lost a lot of blood before the paramedics could reach her."
"Vince hit her with the poker," I said clearly.
The front seat went completely still.
Officer Vance, who had just opened the driver's door to step in from the rain, froze with one boot on the running board. He looked at Hayes over the roof of the car, his eyebrows pulling down into a deep crease above his nose.
"Chloe," Vance said, leaning his arms against the top of the steering wheel as he turned around. "Did you see Vince hold the poker?"
"I heard it," I whispered. "I know the sound. It's the long iron stick from the fireplace. It has a heavy brass ball on top. Dad used it to bang on the basement pipes when he wanted Mom to bring him more ice. But tonight... tonight it made a different sound. It sounded like when Dad dropped the frozen turkey onto the kitchen floor last Thanksgiving."
Ethan stopped chewing on his thumb. He looked up at me, his eyes wide and milky in the dark car.
"Did the turkey break?" Ethan asked simplemindedly.
I pulled the blanket higher around his chest, burying his small shoulder against my side so he wouldn't see the look that passed between the two officers in the front seat.
"Chloe," Officer Vance said, his voice dropping into a professional, careful cadence. "Did your father try to stop Vince?"
"Dad was laughing," I said. "At first. He was telling Vince that Mom was just being dramatic. He said... he said women from her family always make a noise out of nothing. Then... then the heavy sound happened. And Dad stopped laughing. He called her name three times. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. But Mom didn't answer him. She never answers when her head hits the stove."
Officer Hayes leaned over the seat and reached out, pulling both of my hands into her own warm, dry palms. Her skin was rough from outdoor work, but her touch was lighter than anything I had felt in our house for two years.
"You are a very brave girl, Chloe Miller," she whispered. "Do you hear me? You saved your brother tonight. If you hadn't dialed 911 when you did... if you hadn't stayed in that closet..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
At 3:40 a.m., the heavy glass doors of the emergency wing slid open, and a tall man in a dark yellow flannel jacket came rushing out into the rain. His hair was messy, soaked through from the storm, and his face was white as plaster beneath the yellow sodium floodlights of the parking lot.
"Thomas," Vance murmured, stepping out of the patrol car.
Uncle Thomas didn't even look at the police officers. He ran straight for the rear door of Patrol Car 104, pulled it open with a sharp jerk, and dropped to his knees right there in the cold water of the gutter.
He reached into the back seat, wrapping his large, calloused arms around Ethan and me, dragging us out of the vinyl interior into his damp jacket. His coat smelled of cedar sawdust, coffee, and old wool—the smell of safety, the smell of our mother's childhood.
"I've got you," Thomas choked out, his head pressed between mine and Ethan's. His heavy chest heaved against my shoulder as he cried without making a sound. "I've got you both. You're coming home with me. Nobody's ever going to touch you again. I swear to God... nobody's ever touching you again."
"Uncle Thomas?" Ethan whispered, leaning back to look at his red eyes. "Is Mom coming to your house too? Can she sleep in the big room with the pine bed?"
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Uncle Thomas closed his eyes tight, a tear slipping down his nose and dropping onto Ethan's collar. He didn't answer. He just lifted Ethan into his arms with one motion, took my hand with his free fingers, and led us toward his truck parked under the tall pines at the edge of the lot.
Behind us, in the basement level of the hospital where the police vehicles were parked near the county morgue, a brown van with blacked-out windows slowly pulled up to the loading dock. Its back doors opened with a dull thud, and two men in black scrubs rolled an empty aluminum stretcher out into the rain.
