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Vanessa had come to enjoy staying at the Schmidt house.
As soon as she’d woken from her coma, Mike had made it clear that under no circumstances would she go back to her apartment to recover alone. So she’d been spending her medical leave on the pull out couch in their living room, watching TV and playing board games and scouring the newspaper for anything related to the insane case that the three of them were involved in.
That’s what she was doing right now, and thankfully there seemed to be nothing. But you could never be too careful.
Mike, on the other hand, was eager to leave the whole thing behind him and urged Vanessa to do the same. He’d gotten a new job at a construction site, one that paid much better than he was used to, and seemed to be thriving.
Vanessa’s reading was interrupted by what sounded like an argument coming from Abby’s room. The siblings did do their fair share of bickering, but it rarely lasted this long without one of them caving. Vanessa was about to get up and check on them when Mike opened the door, with no Abby in sight. Vanessa looked at him curiously, and he sighed.
“Abby’s not going to school today.”
Vanessa’s eyes immediately widened with concern.
“Is she sick?”
“No… not exactly,” Mike said, trying to find the words. “She’s… she’s on the spectrum, and some days she just isn’t up to it.”
“That’s totally fine, I can watch her,” Vanessa said.
“Really? That would be such a huge help.”
“I’d be happy to, it’s not like I’m doing anything else today anyway.”
“Thank you so much. Just make sure she eats, anything is fine, don’t push her too hard or she’ll get upset. And I’d tell you where the emergency numbers are, but you kind of are the emergency numbers, so if anything goes horribly wrong I trust you to handle it.”
Vanessa laughed.
“Don’t worry Mike, I’ll take good care of her.”
Mike smiled, then picked up his tool bag and vest.
“Bye Abbs!” He called, but didn’t get an answer.
Shortly after Mike left, Vanessa walked over to Abby’s room to check on her. She found her tucked in a fort made of blankets, carefully coloring something with a gold crayon.
“Hey Abby, your brother said I get to watch you today,” Vanessa said softly, crouching in front of the fort. Abby didn’t respond, just kept staring down at her paper with an unreadable expression.
“Are you hungry?” Vanessa asked, but once again got no answer. She watched Abby draw for a while, but she had the clipboard slanted towards her so it was impossible to see. “What are you drawing?”
Abby suddenly stopped scribbling. She seemed to think for a minute, carefully considering if she should show it, then slowly lowered the drawing down so that it was visible.
It was a yellow rabbit, plunging a knife into a woman with blonde hair.
Vanessa’s heart turned to lead.
Tears were welling up in Abby’s eyes, and the clipboard trembled in her hands. She sat stiffly, seemingly terrified of what Vanessa was going to say.
As disturbing as it was to see a kid’s drawing of you almost getting killed, Vanessa understood why she drew it, and what she needed from her at that time.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked, sweetly and gently, and Abby nodded. “I’m not sure how much you saw, but I can imagine it was really scary for you.”
“I thought you were gonna die…” Abby said, her voice trembling and uncharacteristically dark.
“I thought so too,” Vanessa said, unsure of what else to say. “But I’m okay now. And he… the yellow rabbit, he’s… he’s gone now.” That last part was hard for her to say, as much as she hated to admit it. “He can’t hurt anyone else ever again.”
“He was your dad,” Abby cried, “why did he wanna hurt you?”
Vanessa herself was now on the verge of tears, and she just shook her head.
“My dad was a very bad man,” she explained. “Most dads want to keep their children safe, but my dad had something very wrong with him. He liked hurting other people. And if I tried to stop him from doing that, he would hurt me too.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell Mike that he was the one who took Garrett?”
Vanessa nodded hesitantly.
“I was… I was scared of him. But he was going to hurt you and your brother, and I had to do something. I don’t regret what I did, even if I had to get hurt.”
Abby’s tears fell and soaked into her drawing as she stared at it with fear and shame.
“I’m sorry for drawing that…”
“No, no honey,” Vanessa cooed, “I’m not upset about it. Sometimes, when something scary happens, you have to think about it in order for it to stop being scary. And sometimes thinking about it means talking about it, and sometimes thinking about it means drawing it. Whatever helps.” Abby nodded, still trembling. “Do you have anything else you need to draw?”
Abby nodded again. Vanessa stood up and grabbed some more paper from Abby’s desk.
“Here you go. Just draw it for me, and then we can talk about it, okay?”
Abby put the golden crayon back in the bag and picked up a lighter yellow. This drawing was a little more complicated, and a scene that Vanessa didn’t recognize. It involved the open springlock suit in the back room, Chica, and Abby herself, wrapped tightly in Chica’s arms.
“What’s going on in this one?” Vanessa asked.
“It’s when Chica tried to put me in an animatronic,” Abby explained. “I know she wasn’t trying to be scary, but she wouldn’t listen to me-“
“They get confused like that sometimes,” Vanessa nodded. “They haven’t been… alive for so long, they sort of forget what can hurt people. All they were thinking about was how they could make you stay with them. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be upset about it.”
Abby nodded again. She picked up another piece of paper. She was back to using the gold crayon, and as she slowly scraped out the rabbit’s loopy silhouette she looked at Vanessa, silently asking permission to draw the man who’d brought her so much pain.
Vanessa nodded. Yes, yes of course. It’s okay, Abby, everything is okay.
Then she picked up the red crayon. She ground it into the paper, staining the rabbit with blood, as it screamed with a gruesome expression on its face. She looked up at Vanessa once she was done, waiting for her to explain.
“Those old costumes are very dangerous. There’s mechanical parts inside that can snap shut on you if you aren’t careful.”
“And that’s how he…?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
Abby nodded, looking relieved to have an explanation. She began covering another sheet of paper in purple and squiggles, then drew a brown haired man lying in the middle, frowning with his eyes crossed out. The background was clearly the pizzeria’s confetti carpet, and the man… he had to be Mike.
“Is Mike lying on the floor?” Vanessa asked.
Abby nodded.
“He won’t wake up.”
Tears were beginning to flood down Abby’s cheeks at an alarming rate, and Vanessa desperately wanted to reach out and wipe them away. But Abby was already grabbing another sheet of paper. She had more to say. So Vanessa left her to speak.
It quickly became obvious that this drawing wasn’t a scene like the others, but a portrait of a specific person. She had black hair, lots of eyeliner, and dark clothes.
“Who’s that?” Vanessa asked.
“Max.”
It took everything in Vanessa to keep a straight face.
She KNEW one of the people who-
“And how did you know Max?”
“She was my babysitter.”
Oh dear god.
“Do you know what happened to Max?” Vanessa asked carefully.
“Mike won’t tell me where she went,” Abby said fearfully.
“He won’t?”
Vanessa would have to have a discussion with him about being honest with his sister later.
Abby shook her head.
“I don’t know why she doesn’t wanna watch me anymore,” Abby sobbed. “I miss her. I want to tell her I’m sorry for being bad.”
Vanessa reached out her arms so Abby could crawl in for a hug, and she did, and Vanessa just held her and rocked her as she tried to figure out what on earth to say.
How was she supposed to tell this little girl what had happened to her babysitter? How was she supposed to explain the depths of the cruelty of this place that was supposed to be a child’s paradise? How was she supposed to explain to her that no matter what happened to the adults around her, she was still innocent? She didn’t need to hold onto this pain? She was simply caught in the crossfire?
She told her what she herself had needed to hear.
“It’s not your fault,” she finally whispered, her voice raspy. “You weren’t being bad. Things like this happen sometimes, and you can’t stop them. You’re still a good little girl, I promise.”
Vanessa stroked Abby’s hair, holding her the way she wished her father had held her as a child, gentle yet tight, loving and secure.
“Whatever happened in Max’s life had nothing to do with you.”
Vanessa was satisfied with her answer, not wanting to go against Mike’s wishes without him present, and Abby seemed as satisfied as she could be. She clung to Vanessa’s sweater and sniffled, as if she was scared that she too would exit her life without warning.
“Your brother and I love you very much,” Vanessa said, rubbing Abby’s back. “If you ever need to talk to us about anything, just let us know, okay? And you can tell us in any way that works for you.”
Abby nodded, her face still buried in Vanessa’s sweater. Vanessa gathered the drawings and organized them into a neat little stack.
“Now what do you want to do with these? Do you want to keep them?”
Abby shook her head.
“Do you want to throw them in the trash?”
She shook her head.
Vanessa stood up, still holding Abby. She definitely wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavy yet, but she didn’t care.
“I think I have an idea,” she said, and carried Abby and the drawings to the kitchen where she began to dig through drawers for a box of matches. Abby still didn’t unbury her face from her shoulder, or cling on any less tightly, so Vanessa felt okay with taking her sweet time to find one. Once she did, she opened the sliding screen door out to the backyard. She walked up to the clearly handmade fire pit and sat Abby down in a scuffed up plastic chair.
“Okay Abby, I want you to take each of these drawings, look at them, and think about all the bad feelings you put into them. Then you’re going to throw them into the fire pit, and I’m going to help you strike a match, and it’s gonna burn away all that pain that you feel. Does that sound good?”
“Yeah,” Abby said in a small voice, the first word she’d spoken in a while. Vanessa smiled, and handed her the pictures.
“Take all the time you need.”
Abby slowly and carefully leafed through the drawings, pausing on each one for a long time before tossing them into the fire pit. When she reached the last one, the drawing of Max, she shook her head.
“I don’t wanna burn Max.”
“That’s okay, we’ll keep that one.” Vanessa took it and placed it to the side. “Now, take the match and scratch it real hard against the box. Don’t get your fingers too close!”
Vanessa placed her hand over Abby’s, and in a move that was hilariously contradictory for a police officer, showed the child how to strike a match. Abby squeaked in surprise when it ignited, but Vanessa reassured her and told her to throw it into the pit. She did, and the drawings caught fire, curling and blackening as the crayon wax on the paper sizzled and melted, then it all disintegrated into ash. Abby watched the whole process, her eyes wide and glossy, deep in thought and intense focus.
Vanessa rubbed her shoulder.
“Do you feel any better?”
“Yeah, but not completely.”
Vanessa nodded.
“Feeling completely better takes time. But for now, what matters is that it’s manageable. That it’s not so much that you can’t do anything else but think about it.”
“I don’t think I want to think about it any more today,” Abby said, finally looking away from the fire. Vanessa smiled, and scooped Abby back up into her arms.
“I don’t think I want to think about it any more either. Let’s go think about something else. Do you want to help me bake cookies?”
“I love your cookies,” Abby murmured.
“Then let’s head to the kitchen. We can make them together.”
Later that night, Mike came home to a big bowl of chocolate chip cookies, Abby and Vanessa asleep on the pullout couch, and the newspaper discarded, unread, in the kitchen trash.