Owen lowered his eyes toward the blanket covering his legs.
“Mom tried to help me.”
Until that moment, part of me had been terrified that Dana had somehow allowed everything to happen. Hearing Owen defend her changed that fear completely, but I stopped myself from asking for details and told him he could explain everything when he felt ready.
About an hour later, Detective Renata Soto entered the room. She told me officers had searched the house and discovered signs that a serious confrontation had taken place in the kitchen, along with Dana’s phone broken beneath one of the cabinets.
Neither Dana nor Curtis was inside the house.
Then Detective Soto brought up the swimming pool. Officers had removed the black bags from the water and opened them as part of their search.
My stomach tightened as every terrible possibility raced through my mind.
“What was inside them?”
Soto paused before answering, almost as if she already knew exactly what I was afraid she was about to say.
Part 3
“Clothes,” Detective Soto said. “Mostly clothes, and some documents.”
I stared at her. “Clothes?”
“Women’s clothing, Owen’s school things, a laptop, and a stack of file boxes. Nothing that was ever alive.” She let that settle before continuing. “I’m sorry. I know what you were bracing for.”
My knees went weak, and I had to sit down on the edge of the hospital chair. For three hours I had been carrying a fear I couldn’t name, and it drained out of me so fast I felt dizzy.
“Then why would he throw them in the pool?”
“That’s what we’re trying to understand. The laptop and papers are waterlogged, but our forensic team thinks some of it can be recovered. Mr. Dawson, has your son ever mentioned Curtis’s work?”
“Only that he travels a lot. Dana said he handled accounts for a construction company.”
Soto nodded slowly, as if that confirmed something. “We’re still looking for both Dana and Curtis. Her car is gone from the driveway, and his SUV was found two blocks away with the engine still warm. Someone slammed that car door, and then he vanished on foot.”
“He saw the police coming.”
“Possibly. Or he saw you.”
I looked at Owen, asleep at last in the hospital bed with one hand still wrapped around the edge of my sleeve. Whatever had happened in that house, my son had paid for it.
Part 4
The child interviewer was a gentle woman named Ms. Okafor, who spoke to Owen in a small room with soft chairs and a box of crayons. I watched through a window with Soto, and I had to leave twice to breathe in the hallway.
What Owen told them came out in pieces, the way children tell hard things.
Three weeks earlier, he had been supposed to be asleep. He crept downstairs for water and saw Curtis in the study, the door open, papers spread across the desk and a duffel bag of cash beside his foot. Owen asked what it was. Curtis smiled and said it was a surprise for the family.
But Owen had heard the arguments afterward. His mother had asked questions, quietly at first. Where did the money come from? Why did a company call at night? Why were there accounts in her name she had never opened?
“Mom found the papers,” Owen told Ms. Okafor. “She said she was going to call someone. Curtis said she was being dramatic.”
On Wednesday night, the arguing turned physical. Owen heard something crash in the kitchen. His mother ran upstairs, pulled him out of bed, and shoved her old phone into his pajama pocket.
“She said, ‘Run to Mrs. Doyle’s. Don’t stop,’” Owen said. “But Curtis caught me at the back door.”
Dana had thrown herself between them. That was the part Owen kept returning to, his voice wobbling each time. His mother had grabbed Curtis’s arm and screamed at him to let go, and in the struggle, Owen had been pushed through the doorway and onto the patio. Curtis had lifted him by the shoulder and carried him to the dog kennel, a heavy thing he had bought months earlier and never explained.
“He said it was just for a little while,” Owen whispered. “He said I talked too much and needed to learn to be quiet.”
“And your mom?” Ms. Okafor asked gently.
“I don’t know. I heard the car leave. I think he took her.”
Through the glass, Soto’s jaw tightened.
“Did you see the phone, Owen? The one your mother gave you?”
Owen reached into the pocket of the hospital gown, where a nurse had tucked his belongings, and pulled out something small and scuffed. A cheap prepaid flip phone, its screen cracked.
“She said if I ever needed help, I should call the number saved first.”
Part 5
The number belonged to Dana’s sister, Leah, who lived two hours north in a small town on the lake.
Soto called her from the hospital hallway while I stood beside her, barely breathing. Leah answered on the second ring, sounding exhausted, and when Soto told her who she was, there was a long, terrible silence.
Then Leah started crying.
“She’s here,” she said. “Detective, Dana is here. She turned up on my porch at four in the morning. She’d gotten out of the car at a gas station and walked eleven miles. Her face was bruised, and she kept saying Owen’s name. I wanted to call the police, but she begged me to wait. She said Curtis had friends in the sheriff’s office.”
Soto went still.
