hit Gaia last night, which is how it all blew out of proportion. She had done something to his paperwork—drawn on it, I think—and he said he was going upstairs to talk to her about it. To the untrained eye he appeared calm, like any normal father going off to tell his six-year-old not to destroy Daddy’s important documents. But I read the air around him, saw the look in his eye and the twitching muscle in his jaw that all indicate when he’s about to explode. I can sense it in him, as though something builds and builds and needs release. I’d never seen it around the girls before, but as he started to walk out of the room I suddenly knew what was about to happen. I leaped out of the seat and grabbed his arm. He turned and looked at me as if I’d gone crazy.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Don’t what?”
“You know what,” I said. My eyes were blazing. I didn’t care what he did to me, and suddenly it occurred to me that I would attack him if I had to. This thought has never crossed my mind because I figured he’d kill me, but protective instincts reared up in me at the thought of what he could do to Gaia, and I didn’t care. I was prepared for whatever he meted out on me. I could take it.
“You don’t touch her,” I hissed in his face. His expression changed from amusement to anger, and I saw the rage in him shift direction, like a fire caught in a new wind. He looked down, then lifted a hand and clamped it around my throat.
And that’s when it started.
Is it possible to feel terror and triumph in the same instant? I can tell you yes, it is possible, because with every blow of pain, I felt like I kept him away from Gaia a moment longer, each punch and kick allowing him to empty out all that fire onto me instead of her. I curled up in a ball afterward and wept.
I write everything here because I simply can’t breathe a word of this to anyone. To everyone who knows us, we’re the perfect couple, and Tom is the perfect husband.
Who would believe me?
28
the suspects
NOW
We spent what felt like centuries trawling through the forest, shouting for Gaia. Derry and Clive climbed down the ladder to the bottom of the cliff and starting wading through the fjord in case she had fallen in. When they shouted up I saw Tom’s face—he went maggot-pale and seemed to stagger backward. And I knew instantly what he was thinking—that they’d found his daughter drowned in the fjord. Not a year after his wife was found drowned, too.
But they were shouting to signal that there was no sign of her. Maren called the police, and Derry ran up to the road in case she’d wandered that far. Tom and I stumbled through the forest.
“Gaia!” Tom shouted, his voice breaking. “Please, if you’re here—answer me! I promise you’re not in any trouble.”
I spotted a shape that didn’t seem to belong to the forest. It was at the base of one of the huge conifer trees. I raced to it, my heart beating so fast I didn’t think my legs would make it.
It was Gaia, curled up in a ball at the bottom of the tree. She was unconscious. Her lips were blue, and no wonder—it was below freezing and she was barefoot, dressed only in a nightdress.
I called for Tom and he came racing. He took Gaia from my arms roughly, but I didn’t mind. At that moment I thought she was going to die. I clasped my hands to my face and began to weep as he staggered back into the house with her, and when I fell to my knees in the snow I prayed to everything and anything that she would be all right.
* * *
—
The doctor came about an hour later. His bedside manner was cold, and I sensed he was displeased with our household of five adults who hadn’t prevented a young child from venturing into the hostile wilderness for several hours. He said she could be treated at home, and prescribed warm compresses, hot soup, and blankets. We were not, he said firmly, to leave her under any circumstances.
Tom lit the fire in the living room, arranging logs and coal and stoking it until it was roaring hot. I said I would sleep next to Gaia on the floor