She swallowed. “Yesterday afternoon. I was trimming my roses. Your kitchen blinds were open. I didn’t mean to see anything, Sawyer, but I heard shouting, and then I saw Gracie fall.”
Caroline’s face changed in an instant. Not to guilt. Not exactly. It was something quicker and sharper, like panic looking for a place to hide.
“You recorded inside my house?” she snapped.
“I recorded because I was afraid for the child,” Mrs. Kennedy said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “And because it wasn’t the first time I heard her crying when Sawyer was away.”
Those words struck harder than anything Caroline had said.
Not the first time.
I looked down at Gracie. Her eyes were closed tight, as if every adult sentence in the yard was another door shutting.
I kissed her hair. “We’re going now.”
Caroline moved toward me. “Sawyer—”
“Don’t.”
One word. Quiet. Final.
For once, she stopped.
Mrs. Kennedy hurried to her gate. “I’ll come with you. I can show the doctors if they need to know what happened.”
Caroline laughed once, brittle and stunned. “This is absurd. You people are acting like I’m some monster.”
No one answered.
I carried Gracie to the car and buckled her gently into the back seat. Her rabbit sat in her lap like a small gray guard. When I closed the door, I looked through the window and saw her watching the house, not her mother.
That told me more than any argument could.
Mrs. Kennedy climbed into the passenger seat, gripping her phone so tightly her knuckles were pale. I started the car. Caroline stood in the driveway with her arms crossed, rain beginning to dot her blouse.
As I pulled away, Gracie whispered from the back seat, “Dad?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Are we in trouble?”
The question opened something inside me I did not have words for.
“No,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “You are safe. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”
She looked down at her rabbit. “Mom said people would be mad at me.”
“People are going to help you.”