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“Just an apple,” Ryan told the paramedic. “We were at the park all afternoon.”
I stared at my husband from across our living room.
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His face had gone gray.
Sweat covered his forehead even though the October afternoon was cool, and his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Between us, our seven-year-old daughter lay on a stretcher.
Chloe slowly turned her head.
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Her face was still red and blotchy.
Her eyelids were swollen.
An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth.
She lifted one small hand and pulled the mask down slightly.
“We weren’t at the park,” she whispered.
Ryan immediately moved toward her.
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“Sweetheart, you’re exhausted. The medicine is making you confused. Just rest.”
“I’m not confused, Daddy.”
Her voice was barely audible.
But the certainty in it made something tighten inside me.
“And we didn’t have apples.”
“Chloe.”
Ryan said her name too sharply.
I stepped between him and the stretcher.
“Then where were you, sweetheart?”
Before answering, Chloe looked at her father.
Just for a second.
A quick glance past my arm.
As if she needed permission.
That frightened me more than anything else.
My seven-year-old daughter had just struggled to breathe, and before telling me where she had been, she felt she had to check her father’s reaction.
“We were at Miss Dana’s house, Mama.”
I had never heard the name Dana before.
Ten minutes earlier, Ryan had rushed through our front door carrying Chloe in his arms.
I had been in the kitchen making soup when I heard his car pull into the driveway.
Then the door slammed.
