Bring the music box Saturday, she said. 10:00.
He came at 10 exactly. She opened the door and stepped back just far enough to let him reach the kitchen. Not the living room, not the hallway, the kitchen table with its wobbly leg and the oil cloth printed with lemons. That was the line. He seemed to understand it without being told.
May was down for her nap. The duplex was quiet except for the furnace and the refrigerator humming. Hadley unrolled a worn leather pouch across the table. Inside were tiny screwdrivers, brass tweezers, a jeweler’s loop on a cord. My grandfather’s, she said. Odell Rowan. He fixed watches at a pawn shop counter in Mville for 30 years.
She fitted the loop to her eye and opened the walnut box. Jude sat across from her and watched her hands. They were small and chapped from cleaning chemicals, and they did not shake, not once. She knew he was watching. She kept working anyway.
“There’s a spring snapped in here,” she said after a while. “A little one. That’s why the song stopped.”
“Can you get another?”
“Maybe.”
On Monday, she carried the broken spring in an envelope to Break Bill Jewelers on Kingston Pike. The shop was narrow and full of ticking clocks. Arlo Break Bill was 78 with half moon glasses and a cardigan buttoned wrong. He found a match in a drawer of a hundred tiny drawers. Then he watched her test the fit right there on his counter.
“Who taught you to hold tweezers like that?” he asked.
“My grandpa.”
Arlo nodded slowly. “Like that explained a great deal.”
The second Saturday, Jude brought a paper sack of peppermint sticks.
“These are yours,” Hadley said, eyeing the red and white Tolbert label.
“Bought them at the Wiggles on Broadway. Full price.”
She almost smiled. Almost. Halfway through the morning, May woke early and crawled into the kitchen in her socks. She went straight to Jude’s chair, grabbed a fistful of his pant leg, and pulled herself up. She looked at him. He looked at her. He didn’t pick her up. He kept his hands flat on the table and let her hold on. Hadley watched that.
On the third Saturday, she lifted May and set her in Jude’s arms herself. He held the baby like she was made of glass. May patted his chin and laughed.
“She likes you,” Hadley said.
“She doesn’t know any better,” he said.
But his voice wasn’t steady.
By noon, the spring was in. Hadley turned the box over in her palm to tighten the last screw on the base. That was when she saw it. Engraved into the wood, small and careful, in letters worn soft by somebody’s thumb. for Avery. Jane Hadley’s hand went still. She didn’t look up. She didn’t ask. She finished turning the screw and she set the box down gently, right side up.
Across the table, Jude had gone very quiet. He had seen her see it. Neither of them said a word. May babbled in his lap. The furnace kicked on. The question sat between them on the lemon print oil cloth, and neither one of them reached for it. Who was Avery Jane? A daughter, a wife, someone he had lost, or someone who had left? Hadley didn’t know, and she was surprised how much she wanted to.
He left at 1:00. She stood at the window and watched his car pull away. 2 days later, at 9 on Monday morning, someone knocked on her door. Hadley opened it with May on her hip. A woman stood on the step, brown coat, a folder held against her chest, a badge clipped to the pocket. Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.
Miss Rowan, the woman said, I’m Shea Lowry. We received a report concerning your daughter. For one terrible second, Hadley was 7 years old again. Shea Lowry sat at the kitchen table with the lemon print oil cloth right where Jude had sat two days before. She was in her 40s, reading glasses pushed up into graying hair. Not cold, not warm. Careful the way people are when their job is to be wrong as little as possible.
I want to be clear about something, she said. A report isn’t a finding. My job is to find out what happened. Hadley nodded. Her hands were folded in her lap so Shea wouldn’t see them shaking. May sat on the floor chewing a plastic spoon.
The report was filed by your employer, Shea said. Gil Varner. He signed his name. Of course he did, Hadley thought. He states that on Christmas Eve, your daughter was left alone in a stroller beside a cart of cleaning chemicals for 47 minutes and that she required emergency care that same night.
Shea turned a tablet around on the table and pressed play. The hallway outside Jude’s office, gray and grainy. The stroller sat in the doorway, alone in the frame. The cleaning cart stood right beside it. The time stamp counted up minute after minute. Nobody walked into the picture. 47 minutes. It looked exactly like what Gil said it was.
I was right there, Hadley said quietly. eight feet away inside the office. The camera can’t see past the door frame. I looked at her every 30 seconds. Every single time I lifted my head.
Can anyone confirm that?
Hadley didn’t answer that yet. She stood, went to the drawer by the sink, and brought back a folder of her own. The hospital discharge papers. May’s vaccination record. Every box filled. The daycare schedule with the holiday closure circled in red. The text Mrs. Penland sent right after her call on Christmas Eve stamped 3:04 p.m. Fell wristbroken. So sorry, honey.
Shea read every page. She took notes in small, neat handwriting. Then she set down her pen. Miss Rowan, was anyone else on that floor?
The furnace clicked on. Hadley was quiet for a long time. She had built her whole life around not needing anyone to speak for her. Certainly not the man who owned the building. There was one, she said finally. I didn’t know it at the time.
She stepped out onto the back porch and called him.
DCS is here, she said. Gil filed a report.
She heard him stand up.
