The Mother's Fault by Nicole Trope

Author:Nicole Trope [Trope, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

27

Beverly

Beverly shows the two constables who have arrived at her door to the living room. They introduce themselves as Constable Rivers, an older policewoman, and Constable Riyad, a bearded policeman. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ she asks, indicating the battered leather sofa. She experiences a momentary twinge of embarrassment at the state of the sofa; it has a piece of black duct tape across the centre of one of the pillows where three-year-old Riley experimented with scissors he had somehow managed to get out of a high cupboard by climbing up onto a cabinet. He has been a climber since he could toddle, and she had regularly found him on top of the dining room table if she took her eyes off him for even a moment.

She bites down on her smile as she thinks about this. At the time she was devastated at her failure to keep him safe and at the ruining of the sofa that she could not afford to replace, but as the years have gone by, it has turned into an amusing anecdote she has shared with the few friends she has made at mothers’ groups over the years. They keep in touch mostly on Facebook these days, but everyone had thought it was an indication of Riley’s independent spirit when she posted about it. She wonders if this will also be a story she tells people in the future, something that was terrifying at the time, but can be regarded with wry humour when he’s older, as she watches him graduate from high school or get married.

‘So,’ says Constable Riyad after she has gone through what happened again, answered the same questions twice, explained one more time, ‘you say he’s never done anything like this before?’ His dark eyes are creased in concentration and she wonders if she has, somehow, made a mistake, let something slip.

She had not expected the arrival of the constables at her house so soon, but even though it felt like hours, when she checked her watch, she realised that only twelve minutes had passed between her call to emergency services and their arrival. She had imagined that she would be told she had to wait a few more hours before getting the police involved. Riley wasn’t a baby and he could be hiding or angry and walking off his feelings. But police respond immediately to missing children. She knows that now.

‘No, I told you – never.’ Beverly bites down on her frustration at the repeated questions. They must have their reasons.

‘I know it’s hard to keep answering the same questions,’ says Constable Rivers, ‘but we take missing child cases very, very seriously.’ She has short grey-brown hair and tired brown eyes.

Beverly understands that she will be the first person they look to for an explanation. First blame the mother and then… then she doesn’t know what else is possible.

They have asked the question about Riley running off three times now.

‘I understand,’ she sighs, not wanting to appear difficult.

‘And his father isn’t in the picture,’ Constable Rivers states.

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