Chapter 3 - THE YELLOW THERMOS
"She was in my car," I said, the words tasting like ash. "When? How?"
"That photo was taken yesterday afternoon, at the park on 4th Street," Miller said. "Your husband told Eleanor it was a rental car. He brought her to your neighborhood."
I remembered yesterday perfectly. My husband had volunteered to pick our daughter up from preschool. He said they were going to get ice cream. He brought her home two hours late, claiming traffic.
He had brought his fiancée to meet his 'dead' daughter.
"Why would he do that?" I asked, nausea rolling through me. "If he told her we were dead, why bring the child he was about to..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"We think," Miller said slowly, "he was establishing an alibi. A witness who saw him being a 'doting uncle' to a niece, maybe. We're bringing Eleanor in now."
Before I could process the horror of another woman sitting inches away from my little girl, a nurse rushed through the swinging doors.
"She's awake," the nurse said, looking directly at me. "She's asking for Mommy."
I practically pushed past the detective, sprinting down the hallway.
When I burst into the room, my four-year-old girl, my whole world, was lying in a bed too big for her. Wires snaked from beneath her hospital gown, but her eyes were open. They were tired, but they were hers.
"Mommy," she croaked.
"I'm here, baby," I sobbed, collapsing by the bed and pressing my forehead to her small, warm hand. "Mommy's right here. You're safe."
"My tummy hurts," she whispered.
"I know, sweetie. The doctors fixed it. You're going to be okay."
She looked at me, her brow furrowing. "Daddy said the special salt would make me fly."
I froze. The beeping of the heart monitor seemed to deafen me. "What special salt, baby?"
"Daddy's blue salt," she murmured, her eyes drooping heavily. "He put it in the soup. He said if I ate it, we could go see angels."
I couldn't breathe. I stood up, looking at the nurse, then at Detective Miller who had followed me in.
"Blue salt," Miller repeated, already tapping a message into his phone. "We need a hazmat unit at the house immediately."
Miller stepped out into the hall, and I turned back to my daughter. I brushed her hair away from her forehead. As I did, my hand brushed against the pocket of her little denim jacket, which the nurses had folded on the chair next to her bed.
Something hard was inside it.
I reached into the tiny pocket. My fingers closed around something smooth and cold.
May you like
I pulled it out.
It was a heavy, silver pocket watch. My father’s watch. The one he was buried with five years ago.
