Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

I don’t know . . . I can’t—” Sandy’s face crumpled. She leaned forward, putting her face in her hands and wiping away a fresh batch of tears. “I can’t think. It’s like . . . it’s like my brain keeps going blank.”

“I know,” Elle said. “I honestly can’t imagine how this must feel, or how frustrating it must be to try to answer questions like this, that you never thought you’d have to answer.”

Ayaan spoke softly. “No one likes to think of this, Sandy, but sometimes the ones we trust most around our children are the people who put them most at risk. We don’t see that our children are scared of them, that they have reason to be. Is there anyone in your life, anyone at all, that Amanda might have demonstrated fear of in the past? An uncle? A cousin? A friend you’ve had over to the house? Someone who works with you, Dave?”

When neither of them responded, Elle spoke again. “Think about whether you have ever had to encourage Amanda to say hi to someone, to give them a hug, maybe. Someone she didn’t want to engage with, and you thought she was just being disobedient. It probably didn’t seem weird to you at the time, but kids don’t always tell us important information in alarming ways. But there was something about this man—this tall, white man with dark hair—that Amanda didn’t like. She didn’t like him. Do you know someone like that?”

The redness in Sandy’s eyes grew worse, but she didn’t blink as two tears streamed down the right side of her face. Dave continued to stare out the window, unresponsive. Elle took a deep breath, clenching her fingernails into her palms.

Hamilton came out with a tray loaded with a teapot, teacups, and cookies. He set it down on the coffee table and smiled at Elle, whispering, “Attempt number three.”

This one seemed to be a success. As if on autopilot, Sandy reached out and poured herself a cup of tea, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle of the room. She narrowly avoided sloshing the scalding liquid on her hand, but she didn’t spill a drop. Without shifting her gaze, she raised the cup to her lips, blew into the steam, and sipped. Then she took a deep, whistling breath through her nose, and said, “You know, she never seemed to like Graham Wallace.”

Elle’s body went rigid. Hamilton stopped midstride and turned his head, mouth agape. Ayaan was the first one to move; she reached for her tablet and started typing, likely searching the name in the police database.

“Who is Graham Wallace?” Elle asked.

But before Sandy could answer, Dave sank to the floor with a long, stricken moan. Sandy leapt from the couch and ran to him, cradling his head on her lap as he sobbed. The backs of Elle’s hands prickled; she looked at Ayaan, but she was too busy staring at her tablet. Hamilton watched the couple on the floor, as if to make sure they weren’t physically hurt.

When Dave sat up, his face was streaked with tears. “If it’s Graham Wallace, it’s my fault. I hired him three years ago. I knew what he was, and I hired him anyway.” His body shuddered, but Sandy only pulled him tighter against her.

“What do you mean, ‘what he was’?” Elle asked. “What was he?”

“He’s a sex offender,” Ayaan answered, turning her tablet to face Elle. “He’s a sex offender that lives two miles away.”

15

Elle

January 15, 2020

It took Elle a few minutes to convince Ayaan to let her ride along to Graham’s house. She promised to stay in the car while the commander and the two officers she’d called for backup went inside.

Now, watching police approach the quiet, unassuming townhouse from the car, Elle shivered even though the heat was blasting. On the way here, Ayaan told her that Graham Wallace had been arrested twice for sexual contact with a minor. His first victim was thirteen years old and he was sixteen. He had agreed to a plea deal without facing prison time, but then he’d offended again, having had sex with a fifteen-year-old—willingly, according to her, although legally she was too young to consent—when he was twenty-two. He had been released four years ago after serving his time.

Since then, he had no record of new offenses, and kidnapping would have been a huge escalation from his previous crimes. Still, he was a solid suspect.

Graham’s parents apparently let him squat in one of their rental properties, a little townhouse not far from the Jordan family home. Every other home in the community had their sidewalks and driveways neatly shoveled, so it wasn’t hard to spot the one that belonged to a lazy, entitled child of privilege. Drifts four or five feet high swelled in front of the Wallace townhouse, blew over their sidewalk. On the road, in front of Ayaan’s car, there was a small hill of snow and ice where someone had clearly left their car parked overnight during a blizzard and became the victim of a passing snowplow. Even with the car now gone, the snow remained frozen in the approximate shape of a sedan.

Elle watched Ayaan assemble the officers she’d called for backup, preparing to knock on the front door. Feeling like she might go mad not doing anything, Elle pulled out her phone and called Martín.

“Bueno,” he answered after four rings. In the background, she could hear people talking and laughing. “Everything all right? I’m just in the middle of something.”

“Oh, okay.” Her shaky voice gave her away. “I can call back.”

There was a swishing sound on the line and then the click as a door shut. “It’s okay, Elle, it’s just a lunchtime poker game. I can talk. What’s wrong?”

Elle stared out the windshield as she spoke. “There was a kidnapping yesterday in Bloomington. The parents asked Ayaan if I could help. It’s . . . it’s a little girl. She’s eleven.”

Martín knew that Elle understood what the girl was going through,