“This is my son, Mason,” I say, giving his knee a squeeze.
“Nice to meet you, Mason,” she says. He doesn’t acknowledge that he’s heard her or that she’s even spoken. Normally, I’d make him respond to her because it’s real important to be polite, but I don’t have that kind of energy today. Besides, I’m not trying to pretend like there’s anything normal about all this until I know more about what she’s really doing here. She gives Mason another second to respond before shifting her gaze back to me. “I know I said I work in the autism field with kids and families, but I also have a daughter. She has autism too.”
Now she’s speaking my language. No one knows what it’s like to raise a child with autism unless they’ve had to go through it. “Really?”
“She’s nine.” She nods. “She was diagnosed when she was three. We aren’t as far along on the journey as you are, since she’s younger than Mason, but I do know how challenging it can be to work with people who don’t understand your son or how to be sensitive to his unique needs.” Her voice is as soft as her eyes. Melts my anxiety like butter.
“Thanks for sharing that with me.” It might be nice to have an ally through this. She seems kind, and Detective Layne obviously likes her.
“Would it help to talk about what’s going on right now?” She’s got this cute little nose. A dash of freckles splashed across it that you can barely see. Makes her look sweet, innocent.
“You sound like such a psychologist,” I say, giggling. “Is that what they’ve hired you to do? I look like I need a psychologist?”
She smiles. “Or someone that doesn’t look so scary and intimidating who might be able to help Mason give the investigators the information they want so that they can leave him alone, and the two of you can try to get back to some kind of normalcy?”
“Exactly!” I scoot my chair closer to her. “This has completely screwed with all of Mason’s routines and schedules, so he’s a total mess. You know how it is when things get out of whack for them.” She nods in agreement. She knows. Of course she does. “Everyone on Detective Layne’s team is so focused on getting Mason to give a statement about what he saw that they’re forgetting about what we went through. Do you have any idea how awful that was?”
I shudder at the memory of that moment.
Pure, cold fear. At its most primal level. There were no thoughts. No sounds. No words. Nothing came out. Nothing moved. They always say it’s fight or flight when you get scared. They’re wrong. The fear froze me.
But I’d never seen the eyes of an animal unchained. Set loose.
I swallow the terror as it moves from my stomach and into my throat, forcing it down. But it won’t go away. It never does. It’s always there, waiting.
“It must’ve been terrible.” Ms. Walker speaks into my fear.
It wasn’t just his face. It was Annabelle’s too.
I shake my head like it will clear the images crashing into each other, sending waves of nausea through me. “Have you ever seen a dead body?”
She grimaces. Of course she hasn’t. Who has?
“You don’t just get that image out of your mind. It stays there. Night and day. Right there.” I tap my forehead with two fingers so she understands the seriousness of my point. Those moments stay in my head like videos filmed in slow motion, playing nonstop. “You go to sleep with it at night, if you manage to sleep at all, and it’s the first thing you see when you open your eyes in the morning. And speaking of eyes—hers were wide open.” She shifts in her seat uncomfortably, but I don’t stop. Someone has to understand what I’m going through. “They were lifeless, like whatever spirit we have inside us had been sucked out of her. Do you want to know what was the most disturbing?” I don’t wait for her to respond. I don’t care if she doesn’t want to know. I’m telling her. Someone has to know the things I’ve seen. “You can’t close a dead person’s eyes. Did you know that?”
She’s taken aback. Not what she expected me to say. That’s okay. It’s not what I expected to see. “I didn’t know that.”
“You can’t. You know how when somebody dies in the movies and books, you just peacefully close their eyelids? It’s not like that at all. Oh no, not even a little bit like that.” I shake my head. “I tried to close her eyes. To get those big things to stop looking at us, but every time I pressed the lids down, they just popped right back up.” I swallow hard like the memories are bile I’m trying to keep down.
“Things like this tend to be unsettling that way.” She keeps rearranging her face, trying to find the right expression for this. There is none. She might as well give up.
“Unsettling?” I burst into laughter. I can’t help it. These hysterical shrieks come out of me. This isn’t my laugh. And it’s not funny. But I can’t stop. Ms. Walker looks at me like she’s not sure exactly what’s happening and scans the room for a panic button just in case she’s trapped in here with a crazy woman, which only makes me laugh harder. So hard tears fill my eyes. They roll down my cheeks. And then I’m crying. Sobbing. Soul-racking, soul-sucking sobs.
Ms. Walker slides her chair closer to mine, and the aluminum legs scratch the concrete floor like nails on a chalkboard, sending Mason flying out of his chair and into the corner. He clamps his hands over the noise-reducing headphones he wears on his head twenty-four seven.
“Ma. Ma,” he cries out.
I jump up and scurry over to him, swallowing my sobs like hiccups. His hands never stop moving; they scratch up and down along his arms. He rocks. Perpetual motion to a beat thrumming somewhere inside him.
“Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma,” he calls, even though I’m right here.