Chapter 2 - THE LAUNDRY ROOM
The laundry room was locked.
That alone told me enough.
It had never been locked before.
I held out my hand.
“Key.”
Beatriz stared at me.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Key.”
“It contains cleaning chemicals.”
“Then why does Isabella’s property belong inside it?”
“She is confused.”
I stepped toward her.
“Do not call my daughter confused again.”
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then Beatriz reached into the pocket of her robe.
She handed me a small brass key.
I opened the door.
My chest went cold.
Isabella’s books were stacked beside detergent bottles.
Her stuffed rabbit sat on top of a box.
Three pairs of shoes were inside a plastic bin.
Her tablet was wrapped in a kitchen towel.
A framed photograph of her biological mother lay face down beneath a pile of sheets.
Elena had died four years earlier.
She had been Isabella’s entire world before cancer took her.
I had married Beatriz two years later.
I believed she understood she was entering the life of a child who had already lost one mother.
I believed she cared.
Now Elena’s photograph was lying beside bleach.
I picked it up.
The glass was cracked.
Beatriz immediately said,
“She broke it.”
I looked at her.
“Isabella broke a photograph of her mother?”
“She had a tantrum.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
I turned the frame over.
A strip of masking tape had been placed across the back.
Written in black marker were three words.
NO PHOTO UNTIL SUNDAY.
That was not something an eight-year-old wrote.
I photographed it with my phone.
Beatriz’s expression changed.
“What are you doing?”
“Documenting my house.”
“You are making this into something ugly.”
“No.”
“I came home and found something ugly.”
I continued photographing everything.
The locked shelves.
The cleaning gloves.
The small stool positioned beneath the industrial washing machine.
A handwritten chart taped inside the cabinet.
MONDAY - BATHROOMS.
TUESDAY - FLOORS.
WEDNESDAY - LAUNDRY.
THURSDAY - KITCHEN.
FRIDAY - GARDEN.
SATURDAY - GARAGE.
At the bottom, in Beatriz’s handwriting, was another line.
COMPLAINT = EXTRA WORK.
I stared at it.
Beatriz stepped forward.
“It was a responsibility chart.”
“For an eight-year-old?”
“She needed discipline.”
“She already attends school.”
“She has homework.”
“She has violin lessons.”
“Not anymore.”
I turned.
“What?”
Beatriz looked away.
“She stopped violin.”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t serious.”
I had spoken to Isabella six weeks earlier.
She told me she was practicing.
She even played a few notes for me over video.
Or tried to.
The call disconnected shortly afterward.
I remembered asking Beatriz what happened.
Bad Wi-Fi.
That was what she told me.
Then I noticed another paper beneath the chore chart.
It was a school attendance notice.
Seven absences.
Eleven late arrivals.
I had never seen it.
“Why has she been missing school?”
I asked.
Beatriz did not answer.
The shower stopped upstairs.
Isabella was about to come out.
I folded the school notice and put it in my pocket.
Then Beatriz said something I would remember for a very long time.
“You are going to destroy our marriage over a child exaggerating chores.”
I looked at her.
May you like
“No.”
“If this marriage is destroyed, it will be because you forgot she was a child.”
