Violet’s hand fell back to the floor before I could ask another question. The paramedics lifted her onto the stretcher, and I stayed beside her until the ambulance doors closed. She was alive. That was the only fact I allowed myself to care about.
But the moment the ambulance pulled away, the house became a different kind of battlefield.
I stood in the hallway beneath the green READY light while the two patrol officers worked around me. The house still looked almost painfully normal. Violet’s homework was scattered beside the backpack. Her lemonade sat untouched. A birthday card lay half-hidden beneath one of the papers.
Nothing about the room looked like a place where someone had forced their way inside.
The first officer, a broad-shouldered man named Keller, asked me to walk him through everything I had noticed before the paramedics arrived.
I told him about the open front door. The untouched living room. Violet on the floor. Then I pointed toward the keypad.
