"That's why," she said seriously. Then her chin did something, a small wobble, and was still again. "She looked everywhere. She looked in the dryer. She looked in my backpack. She looked in the toilet tank." She considered. "She didn't look in the fridge because she kept opening it for the—for the grape juice. And she didn't look down. She only looked at the door part."
He sat with that for a second. He had to.
"Bug," he said. "Can you tell me what happened today? From the beginning? Can you do that? You can stop any time you want."
She nodded. She held the peas against her face with both hands now, and he put his arm around her, carefully, on the side that didn't hurt, and she leaned against him, and she told him.
She had come home on the bus at three o'clock. Mommy was home from work, because it was Thursday, and Thursday Mommy was always home first. She was in the kitchen. She was being funny. That was the word Linnea used, funny, and then she corrected herself, because she was a precise child and had been taught by her mother to name things: not funny, silly. Sleepy and silly. Like the paper said. She had laughed too long at something Linnea said about the bus, and then she had said she needed to lie down for a second before swim, just a teeny second, and she had lain down on the couch with her shoes on, which she never did, and gone to sleep with her mouth open.
"And she smelled like it," Linnea said. "Like the grape juice. Even though it's not grape. It's not even purple. It's the yellow kind. It's in the door."
"I know."
"And so I did number two." She took one hand off the peas and held up two fingers, solemnly. "I called you."
"I know you did," he said, and his voice did something, and he stopped and waited for it to come back.
"You didn't answer."
"I was on the airplane."