The next morning, we are woken up by the doorbell ringing downstairs and red and blue lights flashing outside the house. I shake Enzo awake, and he is instantly alert and joins me at the window.
“What this time?” he mutters.
Is there a chance that the detective has come to arrest my husband?
I can’t even wrap my head around that possibility.
I throw on jeans and a T-shirt, and I race downstairs in my bare feet, practically tripping on the stairs. I haven’t even showered yet or brushed my teeth, and my hair is greasy. But you can’t exactly tell the police waiting at your front door to give you a few minutes to pop in the shower.
When I crack open the door, a sober-faced Willard is standing on our front porch, dressed in a crisp white shirt, his tie cinched close to his neck. “Mrs. Accardi,” he says.
“How how can I help you?” “I got a search warrant here.”
Cecelia mentioned this as a strong possibility, but it still shocks me that they’re here. It’s been two days since Jonathan Lowell was murdered, and it seems like there should be other more realistic suspects by now. The fact that they are still looking at Enzo scares me.
“Can I wake up the kids first please?” I ask. “We can start downstairs,” he offers.
That is the best I can hope for.
When I get upstairs, Enzo has managed to throw on jeans and a T- shirt. He can hear the officers entering our house, and his face fills with concern. “They are searching? Now?”
I nod. “This will take a while. You stay here, and I’m going to drive the kids to school.”
The kids are understandably a bit frightened and confused about what is happening. I tell them to get dressed, and I run to take a quick shower and brush my teeth. It’s way too early for school, so maybe I’ll take them to a diner for some breakfast. I don’t want to be here while this is happening anyway.
When I get out of the bathroom, both the kids are dressed and look like they’re ready to go. They are both in Nico’s bedroom, wearing identical worried expressions on their faces. Enzo is in there with them, sitting on Nico’s bed and talking to them softly. I hang back for a moment, listening to the conversation.
“Daddy,” Ada whimpers. “Why are they searching our house? What are they looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Enzo answers. “But they are not going to find anything interesting. So we will let them finish, then this will be over.”
“Are you in trouble?” she presses him. “No.” His voice is firm. “Not at all.”
Then he speaks to the two of them in Italian, which they both understand but I do not. I don’t know what he says, but whatever it is, he manages to coax a small smile out of Ada. Nico, on the other hand, just has a troubled look on his face.
“All right!” I clap my hands together. “Who wants to go out for chocolate chip pancakes?”
There was a point in time when Nico would have sold his Nintendo for chocolate chip pancakes. But now they just stare at me, utterly unenthusiastic about the possibility of eating chocolate for breakfast.
Before I can get them out of the house, Enzo grabs me. He leans in close to me and whispers in my ear, “Do not worry. This will all be over soon.”
I wish I could believe him.
The kids barely talk on the way to the diner, and even though we do get the obligatory chocolate chip pancakes, they both just stare at the
little brown circles and push them listlessly around their plates. Ada has bags under her eyes, and Nico has some dried drool in the corner of his lips.
“Do you want more syrup?” I ask them.
I lift up the container of maple syrup, ready to douse both of their plates in it if that’s what it will take to get them to eat.
“Mom,” Ada says, “do the police think Dad killed Mr. Lowell?” “No,” I say quickly.
“Then why are they searching our house?” Nico asks.
“Well,” I say, “they are searching to prove that he didn’t kill Mr.
Lowell.”
“That makes no sense,” Ada says. Nico nods in agreement.
“Okay, fine.” It was so much easier when they were little and accepted everything I said. Oh wait, that never used to happen. “Here’s the thing. We all know that your dad would never hurt anyone. Not unless he had to to protect us, right?”
I’m proud of how quickly they both nod their heads.
“So it doesn’t matter if they’re searching our house,” I say. “Because your dad didn’t do anything wrong, so there’s no way they’re going to find anything.”
As I say the words, I try my hardest to believe them. If I let my doubts seep into my voice, the children will hear it. And I need them to believe that their father is innocent right now.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I tell them.
But even as the words leave my mouth, I know that they are not true. And that things are about to get much worse.
