Chapter 3 - What Drew Carried Seven Blocks
The memory card had been taped beneath Drew’s shirt.
The broken key had been hidden inside the pocket of his hoodie.
Both fell into my toolbox when I caught him on the porch.
The police officer placed them inside separate evidence bags.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
Drew gripped the blanket.
“The downstairs room.”
The paramedic glanced at the officer.
“What downstairs room?”
Drew’s breathing changed.
Lily pressed closer to him.
I sat beside them.
“You don’t have to tell everything at once.”
He nodded, but words began coming anyway.
Reena called it the punishment room.
It was a storage room in the basement with concrete walls, no windows, and a deadbolt installed on the outside.
Whenever Drew spoke about his father, asked to call me, resisted doing chores, or tried to give Lily food outside the schedule Reena imposed, she locked him inside.
Sometimes Lily was locked in with him.
Sometimes she remained upstairs alone.
There was a chair in the corner.
A bucket.
A thin blanket.
And a camera mounted high on one wall.
“Why did she record you?” the officer asked.
Drew shook his head.
“She said it proved we were bad.”
He described Reena standing outside the room and speaking through a small monitor. She ordered them to apologize. To admit they had lied. To promise they would stop asking about Aaron.
If they refused, the light went off.
My hands clenched.
“How did your leg get hurt?”
Drew stared at the floor.
Two weeks earlier, he had tried to climb a basement shelf to reach a box of crackers. The shelf tipped, and he fell hard.
Reena came downstairs after hearing the crash.
She saw his leg swelling.
She did not call a doctor.
Instead, she accused him of destroying her property.
She wrapped the leg in an old elastic bandage and ordered him not to put weight on it.
The next morning, she sent a message to his school claiming he had influenza.
For two weeks, Drew remained inside the house.
Sometimes in bed.
Sometimes downstairs.
He crawled whenever he needed to move.
“Why did you leave today?” I asked.
He looked at Lily.
“She stopped waking up.”
Lily had been given only water that morning. By afternoon, she was weak and barely responding.
Reena left the house after locking both children in the basement.
Drew found a metal tool beneath a shelf and forced it into the old deadbolt. The key snapped, but the lock opened.
He pulled the camera’s memory card from the wall unit because he had heard Reena say the videos proved everything.
Then he put Lily on his back.
“Why didn’t you go to a neighbor?”
Drew looked embarrassed.
“She said people would call the police and they’d take Lily somewhere I could never find her.”
“So you came here?”
He nodded.
“Dad said if something ever happened, find you.”
I turned away because I could not let him see my face collapse.
May you like
Aaron had told his son to find me.
And for three years, I had allowed a locked front door and a cruel woman’s excuses to keep me away.
