what bothered him…no, “puzzled” him, he said, never came right out and said it bothered him but you could see by the way he…he didn’t understand how the baby could get so far down. (BEAT) now i am losing you, right? okay, yeah, i’m getting ahead of myself…it seemed to him that the baby, a baby that young and small, she was such a small little thing…was too far down toward the foot of the bed, and turned, something about that seemed to be eating at him. i didn’t understand what he was getting at, the way he kept going back and forth over the events and times and all that, “where were you standing?” and “approximately how long were you…?” blah, blah, blah. i mean, my god, we’re sitting there on the edge of the sofa, the bed my daughter has just died in i can see through an open door back down the hallway, and this man is pacing around, sucking on the chewed cap of a ballpoint pen and…asking me quietly, “did you check on her?” (BEAT) what’s he getting at, anyway? i mean, that’s a no-win, isn’t it? think about it…if i didn’t check on her, i’m not a good father, not anything he can say about it, but i carry around the guilt, you know…maybe i could’ve prevented it. right? and if i did go in there, if i had’ve done what i was supposed to do, had planned on doing, the nap…then maybe she’d be alive, maybe. (BEAT) and for just a second, just the briefest of moments…i catch deb looking over at me. as if this is the first time the thought’s come to her as well. this possibility, the whole incident hangs there—probably only two or three seconds all together—but it just lays there in the air over us all. this shadow of a doubt…there’s another cliché for you…it hangs there until i say, very matter-of-factly, “umm, no, i didn’t, i meant to, but…” and off he goes. says “fine,” stops me cold, and off he goes. onto another tangent… (BEAT) she took my hand in hers, deb did, just after that. scooped it up into her tiny fingers and held it there…all the rest of that afternoon, even after the police were gone, as we sat there into the evening with her mother, our two other children, home from school and having heard it all…none of us talking, just sitting and watching the darkness crowd into the room…she held onto my hand. and somehow, because of that, i felt at peace… (BEAT) anyway, the detective said that he was nearly done, just one or two more items, when deborah grabbed hold of my hand like she did. when she did that…

pause.