Page 72 of I Am Salvation

“We couldn’t afford to move.”

“All right. So you put a lock on her window. How much longer until she was taken?”

“It was less than a year later.” She takes another sip of coffee. Then she grabs a Kleenex from the box on the coffee table and dabs at her eyes.

Is she truly feeling sadness? Remorse? Or is she just trying to get me to pity her? Make me so uncomfortable that I leave her in peace?

“Do you see why I try not to talk about this? Even think about it?” She buries her face in her hands. “And now that Felix is gone, what do I have left? I can’t think about my daughter. Or even about my son.”

“Why not? You can still have a relationship with your son.”

Dragon will never allow that, but she doesn’t have to know.

Besides, she treated him like a piece of shit last night.

“All right.” I return to the chair I was sitting in. “Now tell me about the night Griffin was taken. You say you put a lock on her window. And I assume the doors were locked.”

“Yes.”

“When did you find out she was missing?”

“The next morning when we went into her room.”

“How was she that night when she went to bed?”

“She had only been back in her room for a few nights at that point. She used to cry herself to sleep, scared. And she…”

“She what?”

She inhales slowly. “She missed her brother, if you must know. There was this set of pajamas she would wear—they were her favorite, a Christmas gift from Dragon. Pink with rainbows. From the moment he left, they were the only pair of pajamas she would wear to bed.”

She missed her brother.

So many things I could say to that, but I hold myself in check.

“So she had finally gone back to her own room.”

“Yes. Felix and I tried to get her to move into Dragon’s room, but she wouldn’t. She kept saying it was Dragon’s room, and she wanted him to come back.”

“Did you think about going to get Dragon?”

She frowns. “Not at that point, no. We still thought he had attacked his sister.”

I draw a breath again, holding my temper. “I see. What did you find the next morning, after Griffin disappeared?”

“The window was open, as it was the first time.”

“What about the lock?”

She closes her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Is it possible you forgot to lock the window?”

She snaps her head toward me. “Of course not!”

But she’s lying. She looks at her lap, slides her fingers over the rim of her coffee cup.

She’s lying because she didn’t think she had to lock the window. At that point, she still thought Dragon was the one who had hurt Griffin.

---