Chapter 3 - THE LIST OF THE BLIND
The silence in the room wasn't quiet. It was heavy, wet, and suffocating, like a wool blanket soaked in gasoline.
Ava stood up from her chair.
She didn't hurry. She didn't cringe. She stood up straight in her torn lilac dress, her wrapped knuckles pressed tight against the fabric of her skirt, her dark eyes sweeping across the semicircle of adults who had spent the last twelve hours deciding which juvenile detention center she belonged in.
“Mom,” Ava said, her voice small, calm, and completely devoid of hope. “I told you three months ago.”
Diane’s eyes whipped toward her daughter. “Ava... no... you said—you said Wade was being strict—”
“I told you he locked Tommy in the closet under the stairs while you were at the grocery store,” Ava said, staring straight into her mother’s face. “I told you Tommy was screaming inside the dark because there were water pipes clicking in the wall. You told me I was being dramatic. You told me I needed to stop trying to cause trouble between you and your new husband.”
Diane took a step back, her hand flying to her throat, her pearl necklace catching between her trembling fingers. “I... I thought you meant he sent him to his room for a timeout! I didn't know—!”
Ava turned her head five degrees to the left.
“Grandpa,” she said.
Diane’s father, Richard, froze with his warm glass of bourbon halfway to his lips.
“I showed you the welt on Tommy’s leg in April,” Ava said. “When you came over to fix the lawnmower. You laughed. You told me a firm hand never ruined a child, and that my dad was too soft on me because he was in the military and felt guilty for being gone.”
Richard’s face went from pale gray to a deep, blotchy red. He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked down at his leather shoes. He didn't say a word.
Ava turned her head five degrees more.
“Aunt Fen.”
Fen let out a small, choking sound in the corner, her arms wrapping tighter around her chest as if she were trying to disappear into the upholstery of her armchair.
“I came to your house in May,” Ava said softly. “I showed you the picture of the bolt on the door. I begged you to take Tommy for the weekend so Wade wouldn't be alone with him while Mom was in Nashville. You told me I was being an instigator. You said I was just like my father—always looking for an enemy where there wasn't one.”
“Ava... baby...” Fen sobbed, tears finally bursting from her eyes and running down her face. “I didn't... I didn't think he was... I thought it was just a lock to keep him from wandering out to the pool at night... I didn't—”
“Uncle Russ.”
Russ didn't wait for her to speak. He took two steps back toward the brick fireplace, his broad shoulders collapsing inward, his arms dropping to his sides like dead weights. He looked at the floorboards between his boots, his large jaw working silently.
“You said I should be grateful a man cared enough to set boundaries,” Ava whispered to him. “When I told you Tommy was hiding under his bed every time Wade’s car pulled into the driveway.”
Finally, Ava turned her eyes toward the sofa where Eleanor sat.
“Grandma,” Ava said, her voice dropping so low it was almost lost beneath the sound of the rain outside. “You told me that if I kept telling lies about Wade, no one would believe me when real bad things happened. You said kids need discipline, and that a mother’s job is to stand behind her husband.”
One by one, every adult in the living room who had sat in judgment of a twelve-year-old girl found somewhere else to look.
They looked at the Persian rug. They looked at the white wedding ribbons fluttering against the rain-streaked windowpane. They looked at the half-empty bourbon glass sitting on the side table.
They looked anywhere except at the little girl with blood on her knuckles.
Arthur Vance stood behind his son’s chair, his face pale, his hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles were white. He turned slowly, looked down at Wade, and then looked at his wife, Patricia.
“Not again, Patricia,” Arthur hissed. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a terrifying, cold venom that made Wade flinch more violently than he had when I entered the room. “I told you when we paid off the academy in Ohio... I told you if he pulled this sick shit again, I wouldn't spend another dime.”
Patricia Vance covered her mouth with her hands, letting out a stifled, strangled groan, her eyes darting toward the front door as if looking for an escape route.
Ava wiped her face with the back of her paper-towel-wrapped hand, smearing a thin streak of wet soot across her cheek.
“We’re children,” she said, her voice rising just enough to hit every corner of the silent room. “We’re seven and twelve years old. And every single adult in this room chose him over us because it was easier than ruining a wedding.”
She turned back to me.
Her brown eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time since I had stepped through the front door, the hard, unnatural stillness in her small frame collapsed. Her shoulders shook.
“But that’s not why I hit him, Dad,” she whispered.
My lungs stopped working.
The air in my chest turned to lead. I stepped closer, dropping my hand onto her small, trembling shoulder. “What do you mean, Ava? What do you mean that’s not why you hit him?”
Ava looked toward the dark stairwell leading up to the second floor of the house.
May you like
Her voice dropped to a terrible, hollow whisper that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
“Because Tommy is still in the room under the floorboards,” she said. “And Wade took the key with him when he went down to the reception.”
