It wasn't until they had gone and Ellen was rinsing their coffee mugs that the phone rang in the kitchen. She turned off the faucet, crossed the room, and checked caller ID, which showed the newspaper's main number. She picked up. "Hello?"
"Ellen?" Marcelo asked, worried. "Are you okay? I've been calling your cell."
"I think I left it in your car. I was going to call you, but my father and my new stepmother just left."
"How are you?"
"Good, okay." Ellen glanced over and saw that the Coffmans still weren't home, their house dark. "You probably want me to look at that story, huh?
"Only if you feel up to it." I'm not sure.
"Then let it go. I loved what you wrote for the homicide piece."
"Good, thanks." Ellen felt a warmth she couldn't deny.
"I'll be done here around nine. Happily, there's news besides you."
"You'd never know it from the crowd outside."
"Would you like company tonight? I don't think you should be alone."
"I'd like that."
"I'll be there." Marcelo's voice softened. "Take care of yourself, "til then."
"See you." Ellen hung up and left the kitchen by the other exit, feeling an odd sensation when she reached the upstairs landing. It was exactly the spot where Carol had set Will down, before she'd made her final stand.
Ellen felt a tightness in her chest, then forced herself to step over the spot and climb the stairs. She caught a glimpse of the scene outside on the sidewalk, and the reporters were still there, smoking cigarettes and holding cups of take-out coffee against the cold. The afternoon sky spent its last hour before twilight descended, dropping purple and rose streaks behind the cedar shakes and satellite dishes, a suburban night in winter.
Ellen's clogs clattered on the wooden stair, echoing in the silent house, and she wondered how long she'd go on noticing every noise that she'd never noticed before. She lived in a house of echoes now. She'd have to exchange her clogs for slippers if she wanted to keep her sanity.
She reached the top of the stair, which ended in front of Will's room, and faced his door, which was closed. Not that it helped. Butterfly stickers, scribbled drawings, and a Will's ROOM license plate covered the door, and Ellen reached almost reflexively for the doorknob, then wondered if she should go in.
"Mrrp?" Oreo Figaro chirped, rubbing against her jeans, his tail curled around her leg.
"Don't ask," she told him, twisting the doorknob. She opened the door, and the Cheerios-and-Play-Doh smell caught her by the throat. She willed herself not to cry, and her gaze traveled around the room, dark except for the white rectangle of the window shade, bright from the snow and the TV klieg lights outside. She didn't know how long she stood there, but it was long enough for the daylight to leak away, so stuffed animals dematerialized into shadowy blobs and the spines of books thinned to straight black lines. Stars glowed faintly from the ceiling, and the WILL constellation took her back in time, to the countless nights she'd held him before bed, reading to him, talking or just listening to his adorable up-and-down cadence, the music of his stories from school or swimming, told in his little-boy register, like the sweetest of piccolos.
She watched almost numbly as Oreo Figaro leapt noiselessly to the foot of Will's bed, where he always slept, curled next to a floppy stuffed bunny whose ears were silhouetted in the light from the window shade. Will had gotten that bunny at a party that Courtney had thrown for her at work, when she adopted him. Sarah Liu had given it to him.
Anger flickered in Ellen's chest. Sarah, who was supposed to be her colleague. Sarah, who would later sell both of them out, for money. Sarah, who stole from her the choice about when or whether to give Will up. He could be here right now, home where he belonged, cuddled up with his cat, instead of in a strange hotel room, lost and confused, in all kinds of pain, going home to a house without a mother.
"You bitch!" Ellen heard herself shout. In one movement, she lunged into the room, grabbed the stuffed bunny, and hurled it into the bookshelves, where it hit a toy car. Oreo Figaro leapt from the bed, startled.
Anger flamed in Ellen's chest, and she hurried from the room.
On fire.