I Couldn’t Remember Hearing Anyone Come Back Upstairs

saying I wasn’t cold.

I watched three officers go through the Finch house with guns drawn.

They were in there a long time.

Too long.

Finally one of them came back out with Melissa.

She wasn’t crying.

That bothered me worse than if she had been.

She was barefoot and wrapped in somebody’s sheriff’s department jacket, face blank as notebook paper. When she saw continue reading …