“Melanie, why?” I hear my mother cry. She’s pleading with me. I don’t understand. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“She didn’t know,” I hear my father say. He tells me to go inside. My nanny waves me in with one hand, the other covers her mouth. My mother wails. It’s a guttural scream, one like an animal might make. The kind you never forget.
I watch as my father comforts her. “She’s just a girl, darling.”
“She could have alerted us.” She throws up her hands and then when she can’t figure out what else to do with them, she covers her face. I watch as my father rubs her back. He uses small circles. I’m old enough to know my shapes. “She could have done something, Charles. You know she could have.”
something,I look on from inside the window that overlooks the backyard. There are men in ja
