Chapter 3 - The Boy Who Wouldn't SleepLeo woke screaming at 1:14 in the morning.
Ethan heard him through the baby monitor they had never quite stopped using.
He was out of bed before the second scream.
When he entered Leo's bedroom, the little boy was sitting upright, clutching a stuffed dinosaur.
"No car!" Leo cried. "No car!"
Ethan switched on the bedside lamp.
"Hey. It's Daddy."
Leo reached for him.
Ethan lifted his son and held him against his chest.
The boy's heart beat fast beneath his pajamas.
"I couldn't get it," Leo whispered.
"What couldn't you get?"
"My yellow car."
Ethan closed his eyes.
Of everything that had happened, the ruined toy was the detail Leo could understand.
A broken car.
A frightening noise.
A stranger pulling him away.
An angry father.
Ethan sat in the rocking chair Allison had bought when she was pregnant.
He had considered removing it after remarrying.
Vanessa said it made the room feel like a shrine.
He was glad now that he had ignored her.
"Leo, look at me."
The child raised his tear-streaked face.
"The car doesn't matter. You matter."
Leo frowned.
"Mommy gave it."
Ethan's chest tightened.
"Yes, she did."
Allison had died nearly three years earlier, after a long illness.
Leo remembered her in fragments: a soft voice, a blue blanket, songs about the moon.
The yellow car had become something more important than a toy.
It was proof that she had once held him.
"I want Mommy," Leo whispered.
Ethan pressed his lips to his son's hair.
"I know."
There was a silence.
Then Leo said something Ethan wasn't prepared to hear.
"Nessa threw it."
Ethan went still.
"What?"
"Nessa threw my car."
Vanessa had insisted Leo accidentally sent it into traffic.
Ethan looked toward the bedroom door.
"Are you sure, buddy?"
Leo nodded.
"She pulled it."
He demonstrated with one hand, closing his little fist and jerking it backward.
"Then she made it go."
Ethan felt the room tilt around him.
"Did she tell you to go get it?"
Leo nodded again.
The answer was quiet.
But it was unmistakable.
Ethan's first instinct was disbelief.
Not because Leo often lied.
He didn't.
But because accepting his son's words required accepting something monstrous about his wife.
Vanessa had been married to him for seventeen months.
She planned birthday parties.
She decorated the house for Christmas.
She bought Leo matching pajamas and introduced him to friends as her beautiful boy.
Ethan had mistaken these gestures for proof of love.
Surely there was another explanation.
Maybe she had tossed the car toward him and it bounced.
Maybe Leo had misunderstood a game.
Maybe fear had rearranged the memory.
Ethan hated himself for considering those possibilities.
But he considered them anyway.
He carried Leo back to bed and waited until the boy slept.
Then he went downstairs.
Vanessa was in the kitchen, standing beside the sink.
Her laptop was open.
She closed it when he entered.
"Is he okay?"
"No."
She sighed.
"The poor thing. What a terrible day."
Ethan watched her carefully.
"Leo says you threw his car into the street."
Vanessa's expression barely changed.
Then concern spread across her face.
"Oh, honey."
"What happened?"
"He's traumatized."
"That isn't an answer."
She approached him.
"Ethan, he's four. He saw his favorite toy destroyed. He's trying to make sense of something frightening."
"He says you took it out of his hands."
Vanessa's eyes filled with tears.
"Do you honestly think I would put our son in danger?"
Ethan said nothing.
Her voice rose.
"After everything I've done for this family?"
"Vanessa—"
"I gave up my apartment. My career opportunities. Half my friendships. I've spent the last year trying to make a little boy feel loved while everyone compares me to a woman I can never replace."
The reference to Allison struck exactly where Vanessa intended.
Ethan's face tightened.
"Don't make this about Allison."
"Then don't accuse me of being cruel to Leo."
He stepped backward.
"I'm asking what happened."
"And I'm telling you that he's confused."
She took his hand.
"You know how children's memories can work after a shock. Perhaps we should speak to someone."
"A child psychologist?"
"Just to help him process the trauma."
Ethan looked at her.
Something about the speed of that suggestion unsettled him.
By breakfast, Vanessa had placed a new yellow race car on the kitchen table.
It looked remarkably similar to the old one.
Leo stopped when he saw it.
Vanessa smiled brightly.
"Surprise!"
The boy did not move.
"I found one just like yours."
Leo stared at her.
"That's not mine."
"I know, sweetheart. It's a replacement."
He stepped behind Ethan.
"Don't throw it."
Vanessa's smile vanished.
Only for a moment.
Then she laughed softly.
"Of course I won't."
Ethan looked from his son to his wife.
Leo clutched his father's hand.
"Don't let Nessa take it."
Something cold settled in Ethan's stomach.
He took the new toy and put it on a shelf.
"We don't have to play with it."
Vanessa turned toward the coffee machine.
Her fingers gripped the counter so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
Later that morning, Ethan discovered she had deleted her browsing history and several messages from her phone.
It could have meant nothing.
People deleted messages all the time.
But then his own phone rang.
The caller was his late wife's older sister, Miriam Bell.
Miriam rarely called unless something was important.
"Ethan," she said, without greeting. "I saw the video."
"I know how it looks."
"That's not why I'm calling."
Her voice trembled.
"Did anything happen to Leo near a road?"
Ethan's mouth went dry.
"How did you know?"
There was a pause.
Then Miriam said, "Because Allison left instructions for me if anyone ever tried to use Leo to get control of the meadow."
Ethan stared through the kitchen window.
Outside, Vanessa stood beside her car, speaking urgently into her phone.
"What instructions?"
May you like
Miriam's answer changed everything.
"Instructions she made me promise never to ignore. And Ethan, I think someone has finally given us a reason to open them."
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