Page 8 of No One Can Know

She stares at the tabletop as she answers. It’s a fake wood veneer, the image of wood grain printed on cheap laminate. She bites her lip to focus. “Mom and Dad. They were—Mom was in the hall. There was blood on her shirt and on the floor, and—”

She’s practiced this in her head a million times, and still it’s coming out in sputters, like a hose with a kink in it. Ellis holds up a hand, stopping her.

“Start at the beginning. Where were you last night?”

“Right,” she says. “Sorry. We were—I wanted to sleep out in the tree house. We do that sometimes. When it’s warm. It was warm last night. We were out there.”

“All three of you? Emma and Juliette were with you?” Hadley asks sharply. Ellis gives him a look, which he ignores.

Emma screaming. The front door slamming.

Juliette pressing a finger to her lips.

Someone running through the woods.

Juliette stumbling in, dirty water dripping from her hair.

“Yes,” she says. “We were all together. We stayed up for a little while talking, and then we fell asleep.”

“Did any of you get up in the night?” Hadley asks. Ellis’s voice is exaggeratedly friendly; Hadley doesn’t bother to make it sound like anything but a demand.

She shakes her head.

“Are you sure, Daphne?” Ellis presses. “Maybe Juliette or Emma got up and you didn’t notice.”

“I would have noticed. I was sleeping in front of the door. They would have had to climb over me to get out,” she says, and then she thinks this is a mistake. Emma always sleeps by the door. Juliette is afraid of falling and Daphne used to roll around in her sleep, so it’s always been Emma. She stills, panicked, but Ellis just nods.

“All right.” He leans back in his chair. “When did you go back into the house?”

“I’m not sure,” she says. She frowns like she’s thinking. “What time did Emma call?”

“Five thirteen,” Hadley says impatiently, but she already knows. The number is burned into her memory.

“So maybe just after five,” she says. There is a split in the wood veneer; she can see the particleboard beneath. She digs her fingernail against the gap, pressing down, feeling the fake wood give.

“Why did you go inside?” Ellis asks.

“I had to pee,” she says, and her cheeks heat up.

“And what happened when you went back into the house?” he asks.

“I used the bathroom. The one downstairs,” she says.

“Your mother was in the hall. Not far away.”

She nods convulsively. “I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to wake anyone up,” she says. “I didn’t see her until—until—” A sudden wave of queasiness rolls through her, and she whines, high-pitched, bending forward on herself.

“Hey, easy there,” Ellis says, reaching across the table to touch her shoulder. She whips away from him. She doesn’t want to be touched. His eyes crinkle again, but there’s no warmth in them. “You saw her when you came out of the bathroom?”

“Yes,” she whispers. Hadley is watching her intently. She’s certain she’s made a mistake already.

“What did you do then, Daphne?” Ellis prompts.

“I screamed, I think,” she says. “I ran over to her, and I called for my dad. And then I turned around and I saw him, too. Then Emma and Juliette were there. Juliette tried to help Mom but Emma stopped her, because she could tell—she didn’t think we should touch anything.”

“You could tell they were dead,” Ellis says.

She nods. “You could see things. In Daddy’s head.” She doesn’t mean to use the word, babyish, juvenile. She’s twelve, not four. But Ellis’s face softens.

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