My mother’s eyes are a deep, vivid blue, the same color as Ava’s, with a darker ring around the iris. Her reading glasses hang from a slim gold chain around her neck. She still wears her hair in a swingy bob, the same silvered gray it’s been as long as I can remember.
“What did Ava want to talk about?” I search her face for a sign that three years have passed since we’ve seen each other, but my mother is ageless. She looks exactly the same.
She reaches across the table and captures my hands, holding them as if she’s trying to warm me. From someone else, this gesture would be comforting, but this is my mother. I can’t tell whether she believes I’m innocent or is just trying to establish “rapport.” Not something you need to do if you really have a relationship.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t giving her my full attention. Something about research for her book. I told her we’d talk later.”
Dad remains standing, one hand resting on the back of her chair. His glasses and tweed sport coat give him a professorial air. I can see more lines than I remember around his eyes and mouth, and there is a slight added weight to his jowls, as if his thin face is giving in to gravity. I know that by standing silently above us, he’s trying to establish dominance. Glenn’s hypermasculinity, his shouts and threats, are amateur compared to my father’s glacial control.
I risk a glance at Glenn. His face is impassive, he’s rigid, and his fists are clenched by his sides. I’m pierced again by the loss of our time together, the softness of the rumpled bedsheets, the smooth bulk of his muscled arms and the tender places behind his ear and on his throat that I loved to kiss. “Where were you?” I ask him, more softly than I mean to.
He leans over the table, slapping his hands down with a sound that shoots right through me. “I was at a conference. My flight got in the next morning, and when I got home, the front door was open, the phone was on the floor, and Ava was gone. But you know that, don’t you? You crazy jealous freak!”
I’m out of my chair now, shaking off my mother’s hands, trying to get away from the hate in Glenn’s eyes. My father puts a hand on his shoulder in one of those beautiful gestures that’s both a comfort and a restraint. “Now Glenn, let’s give the detective a chance to talk.”
“Yes, well.” Detective Davies clears his throat. I can’t see his face. Why did he let Glenn shout at me? “We’re waiting for confirmation from Houston, but right now it’s not clear in what way, if at all, Zoe was involved.”
“I wasn’t!” He knows that. “I was in Texas. I had nothing to do with it.”
As I tense up, my mother’s hands tighten around each other on the table, and I remember the last time we were together. There is a reason my parents and even Glenn might think I planned my sister’s disappearance. In fact, there is a reason they might fear I have even planned her death. A chill spreads through me. Even though I didn’t do this, maybe I do deserve the blame.
“Okay, everyone. I think Zoe and I need a few minutes to ourselves,” Detective Davies announces. “Please return to the waiting area, and we’ll meet you back out there when we’re done.”
Glenn storms out, clearly angry he isn’t allowed to beat the answers out of me. My mom reaches out like she’s going to grab my hand again, and I flinch. She shakes her head, and I can almost hear her thinking typical Zoe as she stands and smooths the wrinkles from her skirt.
“We’ll be right outside, sweetie,” my father says, and I wonder if the endearment feels as strange in his mouth as it sounds to my ears. It’s almost a relief when they are all finally gone and I am alone with Detective Davies.
He is lean, with cheeks that are nearly hollow and angular cheekbones. One eye is slightly narrower than the other, and his chin juts just a little to the opposite side. My immediate fate rests in the hands of this man, and those strange eyes make it impossible to tell what he thinks about me.
“Before we get started, I need you to know we’re recording this session.” He doesn’t set anything on the table, and I scan the room. There. On one of the shelves opposite me, above a double-doored cabinet that clearly holds something with a screen, there’s a black box with a light. I had thought it was a wireless router or something, but it must be the camera. It wasn’t an accident that we’re seated on this side of the table, facing it. I need to remember: just because this isn’t an obvious interrogation room doesn’t mean this isn’t an interrogation.
My heart starts beating double time. “Are you going to read me my rights?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” He smiles, but I see warmth in only one eye. The other still squints in permanent disbelief. “I read the statement you gave Detective Valdez, and we have corroboration from a few other sources.”
Who? Felicia and Bethany and I texted and spoke on the phone. Maybe Emma’s pediatrician. I call that office every time she has a fever, just to hear them tell me it will be okay. Or maybe the detective has heard back from the airlines. But I could have taken a smaller, private plane from the Sugar Land airport. I didn’t, but he doesn’t know that. I should be relieved that he seems to believe me, but now I doubt his competence … or his sincerity.
“Okay,” I tell him. “Record me.”
“Thank you,” he says gravely, and I know the recording has been going on this whole time, through Glenn’s accusations and my denials. But he continues the charade by looking up at the black recorder and saying, “Interview with Zoe Hallett. October thirteenth.”
“McPhee,” I correct him. “I’m married.”
“Right. Elizabeth McPhee.” I know he thinks changing my name was just magical thinking. You can’t change who you really are. Screw you for humoring me I think back at him.
He continues. “The time is five thirty and we are in Conference Room B. Zoe, will you state for the record that you are chatting with me of your own free will and are not under any coercion?”
“That’s right.” But I am coerced. If I refuse or balk at any point, I’ll look guilty. Surely he knows this, which makes everything we are doing feel like playacting. I am acutely aware of his eyes on me, and of the camera, which could be showing this scene in real time to anyone. My face feels as hot as if there were an interrogation lamp overhead.
“Will you tell me, in your own words, where you were and what you were doing on Saturday the eighth and Sunday the ninth?”
I tell him everything I told Detective Valdez, in even greater detail. I don’t know if it gives my story added credibility or makes it sound like total fiction.
If I were planning an alibi, I wouldn’t have come up with this one. When Emma is sick, she wants to cuddle, heavy and sweaty against me. We watch television, shows in bright primary colors with simple songs. We both suck on hydrating push pops full of electrolytes. We don’t leave the house. No receipts, no eyewitnesses, nothing to prove where I was or what I was doing. I wish I were there again, and time could thicken to hold us together.
Detective Davies blurs, and I realize there are tears in my eyes. Maybe, if I am lucky, he will think they are for Ava.
Without comment, he slides the box of tissues closer to me. “That corresponds to the statement you gave in Sugar Land. Now I have some follow-up questions, and it’s crucial that you answer me truthfully. Do you understand?”