The Accident

“Are you going to give them back?” she asked. She sounded frightened.

I took a long breath. “No,” I said. “I think we’ll just forget about this.”

“But I did the wrong thing,” Kelly said. “I kind of stole them. But not really. I just didn’t want Emily’s mom to know I’d taken them from her purse.”

“Why didn’t you put them back when Mrs. Slocum left you in the room?”

“I was scared. She made me stand in the middle of the room, and if I was in the closet when she came back I thought I’d get in even more trouble.”

I gave Kelly a hug. “It’s okay.”

“What if we put them in a box and mailed them to Mr. Slocum but you didn’t write on the box who it was from?”

I shook my head. “Sometimes people just lose things. If he even knows about these, he probably won’t be looking for them for a very long time.”

“But what if a bad guy breaks in to their house at night and Mr. Slocum goes to get the handcuffs from the purse to keep him there until other police come?”

It was a relief I didn’t have to explain what, exactly, I thought they might have been used for. “I’m sure that won’t happen,” I told my daughter. “And we’re not going to talk about this again.”

I shooed Kelly off and put the cuffs in the drawer of my bedside table. Maybe, when it was trash day, I’d drop these into a garbage bag and send them off on their way. My guess was, if these cuffs were in Ann Slocum’s purse, not only did her husband not have a clue about them, they weren’t being used in the Slocum house at all. No wonder she didn’t want Kelly telling her husband about the call.

I wondered whose wrists had been of such concern to her.

I drove Kelly to school in the morning. “And I’ll be picking you up, too,” I said.

“Okay.” That had been our routine for the last week, ever since Kelly had gone back to school since Sheila’s death. “How long are you going to do this for?”

“For a while,” I said.

“I think I can start riding my bike again soon.”

“Probably. But we’ll do this for a little longer, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay,” she said, with some dejection in her voice.

“And if Mr. Slocum shows up at the school, wanting to see you, you’re not to talk to him. Go find a teacher if he does.”

“Why would he do that? Because of the handcuffs?”

“Look, I’m not expecting him to do anything, but just in case. And we’re not talking about the handcuffs anymore, and you’re not to tell any of your friends about them.”

“Not even Emily?”

“Especially not Emily. No one, you understand?”

“Okay. But I can talk to Emily about other things, right?”

“She won’t be at school today. She’ll go back in a few days, I’d guess.”

“But I still talk to her online.”

Of course. I was thinking like someone from another century.

Kelly asked, “Are we going to the visitation?” A word she didn’t even know a month ago. “Emily said there’s a visiting today and she wants me to come.”

I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. First of all, I was worried it would be upsetting for Kelly. She’d just been to her mother’s funeral, and wept through most of it. I was worried about how she’d handle another one so soon. Second, I didn’t want her anywhere near Darren Slocum.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“I have to go,” she said. “To the visiting.”

“No, you don’t. People would understand if you didn’t go.”

“You mean, they’d think I didn’t want to go? Because that’s not true. I don’t want people thinking I’m a chicken.”

“You’re not-that’s not what they’d think.”

“That’s what I’d think. I’d think I was a huge pussy for not going.”

“A what?”

She blushed. “A chicken. And besides, Emily and her parents came to Mom’s funeral.”

Kelly was right about that. The Slocums had been there. But a lot had changed in the interim. And the situation between us and the Slocums was different.

“If I don’t go, then Emily will hate me forever,” she said. “If that’s what you want, then I guess I won’t go.”

I glanced over at her. “What time’s the visitation?”

“It’s at three.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at school at two. We go home and get changed, and we go to the visitation. But here’s the deal: You stay with me. You don’t wander out of my sight. Are we clear?”

Kelly nodded. “Got it. And you won’t forget your promise, will you?”

We had reached her school. I pulled over to the curb. “I won’t forget.”

“You know which one I mean?”

“I know which one you mean. About looking into another school for you.”

“Okay, I was just checking.”

From there, I went into work, and told Sally I’d left her some phone message details.

“Done,” she said.

“And there were some other voicemails-”

“And done,” she said. “Okay, some of the places, they weren’t in yet, but I left messages.”

“Anyone looking for estimates?” I asked.

“Sorry, boss.”

We did a quick review of what work we did have going on. Our three active job sites were a kitchen renovation in Derby, a double garage in Devon out back of someone’s house, and finishing off the basement of a five-year-old house in East Milford. For the first time in a couple of years, we weren’t building an actual house from the ground up.