I imagined the look on his face when he saw me kneeling beside the cage.
I imagined dropping the pliers, crossing the yard, and giving him every ounce of anger I had stored inside me since Friday morning.
I stayed with the lock.
My daughter did not need another angry man in that yard.
She needed her father to get her out.
I adjusted the pliers and squeezed again.
The metal groaned but held.
I changed my grip, braced one knee against the concrete, and pulled until the muscles in my shoulders shook.
Emily whispered my name once more.
“I’m right here,” I said.
The padlock snapped at 3:26 p.m.
The broken metal dropped onto the concrete, and I pulled the cage door open.
Emily shot forward so quickly that her shoulder struck the frame.
She hit my chest with both fists and wrapped herself around my neck like the ground might pull her back if she loosened her grip.
She felt frighteningly light.
There was almost no weight to her beyond elbows, trembling legs, and shallow breaths against my collar.
I lifted her carefully, one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back.
“I have you,” I kept saying. “You’re safe. I have you.”
The words sounded inadequate, but they were all I had.
I told her I was sorry.
I told her I should have understood sooner.
I told her she would never have to convince me again when she said something was wrong.
Emily did not answer.
Her fingers remained twisted in the back of my shirt.
I carried her toward the fence, planning only to get her into Mrs. Harris’s yard, into my SUV, and away from that house.
Each step felt too slow.
The back door remained closed behind us.
The curtains on the upstairs windows did not move.
For the first time since entering the yard, I allowed myself to believe we might reach the fence without seeing anyone.
Then Emily’s entire body went rigid.
Her arms tightened around my neck so suddenly that I stopped.
She was not looking at the house.
She was staring at the pool.
The green water sat perfectly still beneath the afternoon sun.
The black bags rested in uneven lumps beneath the surface, their tied tops drifting slightly whenever a weak ripple crossed the pool.
Near the shallow end, a strip of silver duct tape floated on the water.
Emily gripped the back of my shirt and pulled hard, trying to turn my body away from it.
Her breath caught against my shoulder.
“Daddy,” she whispered. “Please don’t look at the pool.”
My blood went cold.
The warning was not the frightened guess of a child who had seen something strange.
She knew why those bags were there.
She knew what Jason had thrown into the water.
I could feel the truth trapped behind her clenched jaw, but I could not ask her to say it while we were still standing in that yard.
I tightened my hold and turned toward the fence.
Then, somewhere upstairs behind the closed curtains, something moved.
