Chapter 6: Supervised Visitation Room Number Four
The linoleum floor of the county social services annex smelled faintly of lemon bleach and old wax. I sat in a molded plastic chair that rocked slightly whenever I shifted my weight, my coat folded across my knees because the radiator under the narrow window hissed with dry winter heat. On the low laminate table between us sat a cardboard box filled with stubby colored pencils and pads of newsprint paper.
A sharp rap sounded on the frosted glass of the heavy door before it clicked open. Case Supervisor Hayes stood in the frame, her clipboard clutched against her gray cardigan like a shield. She looked past me for a second, assessing the room’s corners, before stepping aside.
"Ten minutes past the hour, Mr. Vance," Hayes said, her voice flat with professional detachment. "Forty minutes total. No physical removal of items, no leading questions about the ongoing litigation."
Lily slipped past her skirt, small and quiet in the same bright yellow dress she had worn the day the tactical officers breached the hallway. The fabric was clean now, pressed flat, but she held the hem of the skirt bunched tightly in her right fist. Her eyes scanned the corners of the room before finally resting on the floor near my shoes.
"Hey, Lily," I said, keeping my voice low and level as I slowly slid lower into a squat so I wasn't towering over her. "It's good to see you."
She didn't answer. She walked over to the opposite side of the table, pulled out a chair with a squeak of plastic against floor, and climbed up. Her feet dangled a good six inches above the floor, kicking once against the chair leg before she went completely still.
Hayes pulled a chair close to the door, sitting down with a rustle of paper and clicking a ballpoint pen. "Take your time, Lily. We've got some drawing pads here if you want."
For a long stretch, the only sound in the room was the heavy hiss of the radiator and the scratching of Hayes's pen as she noted the time. I reached into the box, pulled out a blunt blue colored pencil, and pulled a blank sheet of newsprint toward me. I didn't look at Lily directly; I knew from the way her shoulders stayed hitched up toward her ears that any direct gaze felt like a spotlight.
"I'm not much of an artist," I said quietly, sketching the rough, blocky outline of a house with a lopsided chimney. "Usually I just draw floor plans. Square rooms. Straight lines."
Lily watched the blue tip move across the paper. Her chin tilted down. After a minute, she reached out a thin finger, touched the corner of the box, and pulled out a yellow pencil. She dragged a fresh sheet toward herself.
"You missed the porch," she whispered. Her voice was so quiet I barely caught the words over the heater.
"Did I?" I stopped moving the pencil. "Where does it go?"
"Right here," she said. She leaned forward, her blonde hair falling forward to hide her cheeks, and drew a shaky horizontal line across the bottom of her paper. Then she added tiny, vertical hash marks beneath it. "My dad took the old one down. He said it was rotting. But it wasn't. It just needed paint."
"When did he take it down?" I asked, keeping my tone mild, careful not to press against the boundaries Hayes had set.
Lily kept her eyes fixed on her drawing, her small hand shading in frantic, yellow blocks beneath her porch line. "Before the dark weeks. When mommy was upstairs all the time with the door shut. She didn't want to come down for dinner. She told me to stay in the playroom and color until the light went away."
Hayes stirred by the door, her pen pausing. I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes on Lily's hands, noticing the small blue bruise fading near her thumb—not from the raid, but older, half-healed beneath the skin.
"Did she leave through the front door, Lily?" I asked softly.
Lily's hand stopped moving. The yellow pencil hovered half an inch above the paper. She didn't look up, but her breathing hitched, a tiny, ragged intake of air that told me she remembered the exact shape of that departure.
"No," she murmured, pressing the tip of the pencil so hard against the newsprint the lead snapped with a dry tick. "The car was parked in the back by the cellar doors. Daddy told me she went to the hospital because her head hurt. But she didn't take her coat."
Before I could ask another question, Hayes tapped her watch with the blunt end of her pen. "Time's winding down, Mr. Vance. Keep it general."
I swallowed the sudden tightness in my throat and laid my pencil down on the table. "We don't have to draw anymore if you don't want to, Lily."
She looked up then, her eyes wide and pale, searching my face with a terrifying maturity that didn't belong to a child her age.
"When can I go outside?" she asked, her voice dropping to a fragile plea. "There's no windows in my room. The lady with the keys locks it when the lights go out."
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"Very soon," I said, my chest tightening as I held her gaze across the table. "I'm working on it. I promise you."
Hayes stood up, smoothing the front of her cardigan. "Visit's concluded. Mr. Vance, please remain seated until the child is escorted back to the residential wing."
