Chapter 6 — The Key Turned A Quarter Of An Inch
Ryan sat in the driveway with the engine off and both hands still on the wheel.
RyanIn May you told me she threw out a bottle.
EmilyI remember.
RyanI said you'd left it out.
EmilyYes.
RyanI need you to tell me what happens now. Because whatever I think the right amount of angry is, it isn't enough.
EmilyShe doesn't come to the house. Not with a key, not with notice, not for Christmas.
RyanOkay.
EmilyIf you want to see her, you see her somewhere else, and Noah isn't there.
RyanFor how long?
EmilyNot this year. Ask me again next year.
RyanOkay.
EmilyAnd you tell her why. Not me. You.
RyanOkay.
EmilyThe locks get changed before Thursday. Thursday is when she comes.
The locksmith came Monday at eleven and charged three hundred and forty dollars for four new keys on a paper tag.
Ryan called his mother at one. Emily sat on the stairs with Noah and listened to one half of it.
RyanI watched it.
RyanThat's not what this is about.
RyanNo.
RyanNo.
RyanNo.
RyanNo.
He came out and sat down on the stairs next to her.
RyanShe wanted to know who else had seen it.
EmilyThat's what she asked about.
RyanThat's the only thing she asked about.
Diane came anyway. Thursday, just past four — the time she had always come.
Emily stood at the edge of the front window and watched her get out of the car with a paper bag of groceries on her hip and walk up the path and put her key in the lock.
It turned a quarter of an inch and stopped.
She tried it again, harder. Then she stood back from the door and looked up at the front of the house.
DianeRyan? Ryan, open this door.
DianeI have his formula. I brought his formula.
DianeRYAN.
Emily sat down on the floor of her own hallway with her back against the door and Noah warm and heavy across her chest, and she listened to all of it, and she did not open it.
After a while she heard the paper bag being set down on the step. Then the car.
In the kitchen the freezer was running again — eleven bags in it, a fresh empty tray, and a sheet of paper taped to the lid where Ryan had started keeping the log himself.
Upstairs on the nursery shelf, the little black camera kept recording an empty room.