Chapter 7 - Clearing the Cottage
By 3:00 p.m., Aaron and I were standing in the small, stone-faced guest cottage behind Roland's main house.
The wind had died down, but the snow piled against the cedar siding was frozen into hard, blue-white drifts. Inside, the radiators were ticking as they cooled down. Roland had left the property ten minutes before we arrived, following a brief, silent meeting with Detective Vance in the driveway.
Aaron didn't say a word as he hauled Caleb's plastic storage bins down from the bedroom loft. His movements were methodical, almost robotic, as he folded clothes, packed school books, and stacked the remaining toys into cardboard boxes.
"I found his green dinosaur under the dresser," Aaron said, his voice echoing in the empty room. He held up a battered plastic toy with teeth chewed flat by years of use.
"Put it in the front pocket of his backpack," I said, wiping down the mahogany desk where the twenty-dollar bill had supposedly vanished. The paperweight was still there—a heavy brass locomotive that Roland had won at a contractors' convention back in 1988.
Aaron set the dinosaur down carefully, then walked over to the window that looked out toward the main house. Roland’s Buick was parked in the garage, its hood cold. Through the kitchen window of the main house, the small red LED light of the security system blinked steadily, reminding everyone that the system was back online, recording an empty room.
"He called me while we were loading the second box," Aaron said.
"Did you answer?"
"No." Aaron turned away from the glass, his jaw working as he tried to swallow whatever was caught in his throat. "He left a voicemail. He said... he said he's sorry for everything, and that he's going to check himself into the rehabilitation wing at St. Luke's for his blood pressure."
"That's convenient," I said, snapping the lid onto a plastic tub.
"It's not an escape, Clara. The doctor at the hospital talked to him after Vance left. His blood pressure was 190 over 110. They're keeping him under observation." Aaron walked over to me, his hands hanging heavily at his sides. "I'm not defending him. Don't think that. But he's my father. And watching him pack a small bag and walk out to a police cruiser... it felt like watching the whole foundation of my childhood get bulldozed."
"Your childhood wasn't built on love, Aaron," I said, looking him in the eye. "It was built on obedience. There's a difference. And you spent thirty years learning how to ignore it so you could keep the peace."
Aaron didn't argue. He reached out and pulled me into a tight, fierce embrace, burying his face in my neck. His jacket still smelled of diesel and cold air, but underneath it, I could feel him trembling—not with anger, but with the hollow, aching grief of a man whose illusions had finally been stripped away.
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"We're going to be okay," Aaron whispered against my hair. "Caleb is going to heal. And we're going to find our own place—somewhere without stone walls or brass keys."
"I know," I said, resting my cheek against his shoulder. "We already have."
