A Lily in the Light(10)

“Would you say Lily and Nick spend a lot of time together?”

“Not really. He’ll play with her when he’s home, but it’s not like they really do stuff together.”

“He takes her to the park sometimes,” Esme added, wanting Detective Ferrera to see that Nick was a good brother, not the kind Madeline was describing, but Madeline pinched her thumbnail into the flesh between Esme’s thumb and forefinger. Esme did her best not to flinch, but she’d obviously said something wrong.

“When our mom asks him to,” Madeline added.

“How often is that?” he asked.

“Not often,” Madeline shot back.

“What kinds of games do they play at home?” Detective Ferrera was leaning forward now, resting his arms on his knees. Esme pressed herself into the back of the couch. The springs pushed her forward, toward the recliner. The holster rubbed the leather chair and squeaked. The gun made her house feel dirty.

Esme pressed her lips together. Nick and Lily made up their own games. Once he’d rolled her in his comforter so she could wiggle out of the world’s biggest burrito. Another time he’d hidden her toys in his room so she could find them. Once, he’d ripped the last page out of Lily’s book because it was a stupid ending and she could make a better one. Then he’d let her draw on the inside of his closet. Actually, the inside of his closet was covered with Lily’s drawings. Esme shivered. Someone like Detective Ferrera would think he’d locked her in there, not that he’d been on his bed watching, smiling, throwing her new crayons with pointy tips, covering her drawings with Metallica posters so Lily wouldn’t get in trouble. She’d never thought about it much before, but she doubted Detective Ferrera would think those games were very nice.

“Nothing special,” Madeline said. “I don’t really remember.”

Detective Ferrera looked from Madeline to Esme. “Do you remember?”

“Not really,” Esme said. “No.”

“Neither of you can think of anything they played?” He leaned forward a little more.

“He was teaching her to ride a bike,” Esme said. “On my old bike with training wheels.”

“Yeah.” Madeline’s hand squeezed Esme’s. That was good. “He put neon spokes on it, too, so she’d be less scared to ride it.”

“Lily didn’t really pedal too well,” Esme added. “So he mostly pushed her along.”

Well, he’d pulled her. He’d tied a rope to the front of Lily’s bike and attached it to the back of his, pulling her down the block until Lily’s bike had hit the maple root that lifted the sidewalk and she’d scraped her knees and palms. Cerise had slapped him for it. “She’s a baby,” she’d yelled. “What’s wrong with you?”

Detective Ferrera nodded slowly. The officer at the table was screwing the bottom of the phone back into place. The receiver was back in its cradle. The briefcase was open, and there was a mess of wires inside, like a bomb. Esme looked away. She didn’t like the way Detective Ferrera was watching her, searching her face, so she looked at her foot instead, a foot that on Monday would wear a pointe shoe for the first time made of soft pink satin instead of the rubbery sneaker with dirty laces she had on now. If, her brain reminded her. If this goes away.

He gestured toward the birthday cake picture on the door. “Why do you think he’s not in Lily’s picture?”

It was just the three girls, holding huge forks with big bites of cake, each a little bigger than the next like nesting dolls with matching ponytails. They’d made the real cake together and poured cherry juice into Cool Whip for the frosting. Lily had stuck her fingers in the jar and jabbed cherries, licking them like lollipops and popping her fingers in for more. “That’s disgusting,” Nick had told her, prying the jar from her hand and tossing it into the trash. “Really puke worthy.”

“I don’t know.” Esme shrugged, but her face flushed from lying. “Maybe because he didn’t help with the cake. We made it together.”

Detective Ferrera drummed his finger against the arm of the chair. Esme was sickeningly aware that he was missing half a fingernail on his pointer finger. Pink skin showed beneath the jagged nail. Just stop, Esme wished.

“How about the bottles?” he said finally.

“What bottles?” Madeline asked.

“We heard a story about Nick dropping glass bottles off the roof with your sister and the kid down the hall. Someone on the sidewalk almost got hit.”

Madeline and Esme looked at each other, confused.

“Do you think that’s a great game for a toddler to play with her older brother? Dropping bottles off the roof?”

“We never heard that.” Madeline’s voice had an edge to it now. “Obviously it’s not, but that’s assuming it’s true.”

“Sure,” he said. “Assuming it’s true. It’s not a game I get the sense you’d play with her. In fact,” he said, turning to Esme, “I hear a lot of nice stuff about you and Lily. I hear you play all kinds of games with her and walk her to school sometimes. That must be a lot considering all the stuff you do outside of school.”

Esme squirmed. She didn’t deserve that compliment, not now, not after she couldn’t even tell Lily the story of the orange thing. It took so little effort to make Lily happy, so little it almost made her feel guilty when Lily drew picture after picture about how much she loved the cookies Esme brought home from school or some cast-off costume Esme let her play dress up in, but she hadn’t even found two minutes to tell her a story that night. Two minutes would have stopped all of this.