Chapter 3 - The Interrogation of Curtis
The county holding facility smelled of stale coffee, bleach, and institutional despair.
By Friday morning, the initial media storm had already begun to brew. Local news vans were parked outside the precinct, and my phone had long since been silenced by an endless stream of frantic texts from extended family members demanding to know “what lies I was telling the police.”
I didn't care about the family. I cared about the man sitting across the metal table in Interview Room B.
Curtis Miller looked ten years older than he had twenty-four hours ago. His gray hair was tufted in all directions, his orange jumpsuit hanging loosely over his gaunt frame. The defiance that had once defined his retirement years—the loud voice, the stubborn pride, the absolute authority he commanded in our childhood home—was entirely gone.
He looked like a ghost occupying a borrowed shell.
“Dad,” I said, pulling out the steel chair and sitting down opposite him.
He didn't look up for a long time. His swollen, mud-stained fingers were locked tightly together on the cold aluminum table.
“Andrea,” he whispered finally.
“Why did you chase her?” I asked, keeping my voice dangerously flat. “Maisy is seven years old. She carried her baby brother out of a boiling car because she was terrified of you. Why did you look at your own granddaughter like she was a stranger?”
Curtis swallowed hard. A single tear cut a clean line through the grime on his cheek.
“I didn't know where I was,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “The sun... the sun was so loud, Andy. Your mother told me to watch the car while she went inside for milk. But when I looked out the kitchen window, the car was empty. The doors were open. I thought someone had taken them.”
“So you grabbed her?”
“I didn't want to hurt her,” he choked out, his hands beginning to shake violently. “I saw her running across the grass with the baby. She looked like... she looked like a ghost from an old memory. My head was spinning. The pills... I took the yellow pills because my joints hurt, and then the bourbon... everything was melting together.”
“You left them in that car, Dad,” I said, leaning forward until my face was inches from his. “You and Mom both. You were so wrapped up in your own failing minds, your own secrets, your own deterioration, that you forgot you had two innocent children depending on you for their lives.”
“I’m sorry,” he wept, burying his face in his trembling hands. “God help me, Andy, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn't fix bleeding feet,” I said, standing up and pushing my chair back with a sharp scrape against the floor. “Sorry doesn't fix a seven-year-old child carrying a fifteen-month-old baby through a mile of briars because she thought her grandfather was going to hurt them. You and Mom are never seeing my children again. As far as the law—and as far as I am concerned—you are dead.”
May you like
I walked to the door, banged my palm against the stainless steel buzzer, and waited for the guard to let me out into the blinding light of the hallway.
I didn't look back once.
