Chapter 2 - Shadows of the Nursery
The question hung in the cold, damp air of the nursery like smoke from a dying fire. Outside, the sirens began to wail, flashing red and blue lights across the peeling wallpaper where faded nursery rhymes mocked us from the borders. Humpty Dumpty had cracked open; Jack and Jill had tumbled down. And I, Hannah, or Ellie, or whatever name belonged to the bones inside my skin, stood frozen on the hardwood floor.
“How many?” the officer repeated more gently, seeing the way my shoulders hunched toward my ears. He was a tall man with tired eyes and a silver badge pinned to a dark uniform that smelled faintly of coffee and rain.
My mouth felt dry. I looked down at the oilcloth bundle resting on the floorboards. The ribbon was frayed at the ends, tied with the exact same knot my grandmother used when she bound bundles of laundry for the washhouse down the road. Every single week, for as long as I could remember, there had been papers. Not just schoolbooks—we never had real schoolbooks, only stacks of lined paper with headings printed in my grandmother’s sharp, spidery handwriting: Practice Makes Permanent.
“Seven,” I whispered, my voice sounding thin even to my own ears. “Maybe eight if you count the ones she threw in the stove.”
My grandmother, pinned against the heavy oak dresser by the quiet threat of another officer’s hand, scoffed. Her gray hair had come loose from its tight bun, stray strands sticking to her forehead with sweat, but her chin remained stubbornly high. “The child has an overactive imagination,” she snapped, her voice like gravel grinding under a heavy boot. “She was a charity case. A stray we took in out of the goodness of our hearts when her mother proved incapable of caring for her. Ask Claire. Claire abandoned her on the porch in the middle of winter.”
My mother flinched as if she had been struck a second time. She stepped forward, her knees trembling so badly I thought she might collapse again. The bruising on her arm was already turning a deep, ugly purple where the frying pan had caught her.
“I didn't abandon you,” my mother cried, her voice cracking as she looked directly at me. Tears spilled over her lashes, cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “They took you from my arms when you were three days old, Hannah. They told me you died in the hospital. They showed me a death certificate with a seal and a doctor’s signature. I spent nine years believing my baby was in a grave.”
Daniel, kneeling near the vent, slowly turned his head to look at my mother. The anger that had transformed him into a battering ram moments before seemed to drain away, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion. He reached out and touched the edge of the oilcloth bundle with the tip of his finger, as if afraid it might vanish if he gripped it too hard.
“She had a forged death certificate too,” Daniel said, his voice flat and terrifyingly quiet. He looked up at my grandmother, his eyes narrowing to cold slits. “We checked county records in three states. You covered your tracks well, Martha. But you left one thing out of your calculations.”
“And what is that, Mr. Righteous?” my grandmother spat, venom dripping from every syllable. “You think you can waltz in here with a badge and a broken frying pan and undo twenty years of legal adoption?”
“You forgot that children remember the sound of their real names,” Daniel replied. He stood up slowly, towering over the officer next to him. He didn't look at my grandmother anymore; instead, he turned his full attention to me.
He took one careful step forward, stopping well beyond arm's reach. He wanted me to feel safe, even if safety was a foreign country I had never visited.
“Hannah,” he said, his voice softening around the edges. “Do you know who I am?”
I stared at him. The rain on his jacket had soaked through to his shoulders, leaving dark patches of wool. His jaw was covered in stubble, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He looked nothing like the rich, smiling fathers who drove luxury cars up our gravel driveway on Sunday afternoons to inspect the girls lined up against the parlor wall. He looked broken. He looked like someone who had searched through a thousand dark rooms and finally found the one light left burning.
“You’re the man who hit her with the frying pan,” I said honestly.
A strange, humorless twitch touched the corner of Daniel’s mouth. He glanced back at my mother, then back down at me. “I had to get inside, Hannah. The deadbolts on this house were designed to keep everyone out—and the children in. Your grandmother didn't want visitors unless they carried a checkbook.”
The officer with the silver badge cleared his throat, stepping between us to secure the evidence. He crouched down, carefully sliding the oilcloth bundle into a large plastic evidence bag. “We’re going to need to take all of this down to the station, Mr. Hayes. And we’ll need statements from everyone. Child Protective Services has already been notified; they’re dispatching a unit to clear the rest of the children out of the east wing.”
The east wing.
My heart gave a violent leap. The other girls. Maya, who had arrived with a chipped tooth and a silent stare two winters ago. Chloe, who cried for her mother every night until my grandmother made me stuff a rag in her mouth.
“Are they going to be okay?” I asked, looking up at the officer.
He gave me a tight, sympathetic smile. “We’re going to make sure they are, kiddo. But right now, you need to come with us. Both of you.”
He gestured toward my mother and Daniel.
For the first time in my life, I looked at the door not as an exit to be feared, but as a bridge to somewhere else. My grandmother was being led away in handcuffs, cursing under her breath, her silver hair catching the flashing red lights outside like jagged shards of ice. She didn't look back at me. To her, I was never a child; I was simply inventory that had failed to clear the books.
Daniel held out his hand—not to grab me, not to pull me, but simply open, palm upward, waiting.
“Ready?” he asked.
May you like
I looked at my mother, who nodded through her tears, and then down at my own small, ink-stained fingers. The names I had copied a thousand times—Ellie, Sarah, Jessica, Rachel—seemed to peel away from my skin like dry mud.
I placed my hand in my father’s.
