Everything happens both quickly and slowly. We stagger back to the car, and Rob drives us to a police station. We have to wait there for a long time. I am still bleeding a little but I won’t let Rob take me to a hospital. No, I say, no, no, no, no, NO. As the “NO’s get louder Rob backs away, startled. At last a tired man with pouches under his eyes comes out. I tell him what Little Teddy saw. He makes some phone calls.

We wait for someone else to arrive. It is her day off. She hurries in, wearing fishing waders. She has been on her boat. The detective looks very tired and kind of like a possum. I recognize her from when they searched my house, eleven years ago. I am pleased by this. Brain is really coming through for me today! But the possum detective looks less and less tired the longer I talk.

I wait on another plastic chair. Still the police station? No, this is full of hurt people. Hospital. In the end it is my turn, and they staple me up, which is weird. I refuse the painkiller. I want to feel it. So short, this life.

By the time Rob drives me home, it is dawn. As we turn into my street I see a van stopped outside her house. Cars with beautiful red and blue lights, which play on the green trim and the yellow clapboard. The lady is crying and she holds her Chihuahua tight, for comfort. The dog licks her nose. I feel bad for her. She was always nice. Mommy never hurt the Chihuahua lady’s body, but she hurt her all the same.

They put up big white screens around the Chihuahua lady’s house, so that no one can see anything. I stay at the living room window, watching, even though there is nothing to see. It takes some hours. I guess they have to dig deep. Mommy was thorough. We all stay there, awake and alert in the body, watching the white screens. Little Teddy cries silently.

We know when they bring her out, Little Girl With Popsicle. We feel her as she passes. She is in the air like the scent of rain.

The next-door-neighbor lady has not come back. She was calling the little girl’s name as she ran from me into the woods. That made me think. I told the possum detective about her. When they looked through her house and all her things I felt bad for her—even after everything. It was her turn to have all those eyes on her stuff. Then they found out she was the sister of Little Girl With Popsicle. When I heard, I thought, Now they’re both dead. I felt sure. I don’t know why.