Eve

Detective Gordon has placed his hands at the edge of the lid of a large freezer chest, the kind you are not supposed to have anymore because of the risk to children, though this one is unplugged and, if you look closely, very slightly open, just enough space to slide a knife through. He is braced as if about to uncover horror. He doesn’t notice Eve standing just behind him.

The men are waiting as well, also silent. Perhaps they think she has his permission to be there because no one has suggested she leave. Even the dogs have quieted. Detective Gordon is wearing gloves, transparent rubber ones like a surgeon’s. A bad sign. All the signs are bad. He grips the edge of the lid and heaves, but the effort is unnecessary. The freezer lid opens smoothly and easily. The smell is atrocious. He reels back, bumping into her, though he doesn’t turn around so he still doesn’t realize she is just behind him.

“Fucking hell,” he says loudly. His words hit her like shrapnel, the kind they use in a terrorist bomb, fragments designed to enter your body and then expand. Her mouth fills with warm fluid like blood but it has the sour taste of bile. She doesn’t want to look in the chest after all, so she shuts her eyes and moves closer, then she forces them open quickly.

At first it’s too dark to make out more than a curled shape at the bottom of the chest, thin legs twisted awkwardly together. She forces her glance to travel up the small, inert body. The face is the kind of stark white that happens after a major hemorrhage, though there is no blood to be seen apart from cuts on her legs and arms and dark crusting on her fingers and, yes, an enormous bruise on her forehead that looks like a painting of a flower, a deep mauve-and-red one with unfurling petals. She looks lovely. A lovely dead child, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, babes in the wood after all. Is there no end to the fairy tales that fit?

Detective Gordon turns his head, asking quietly for something. She doesn’t catch his words but his glance falls on her and he looks aghast. She doesn’t care. In that moment of his surprise she straddles the edge and is over, inside the freezer, half lying and half kneeling in the shit and the vomit and the broken glass, crying, at least she must be, someone is making that low groaning noise. She takes her daughter’s body in her arms. She pushes her face against Sorrel’s and wraps her arms around her. She was expecting her to be cold, icy cold, but she’s still warm and her skin still smells of her. Detective Gordon reaches over the edge of the freezer.

“Fuck off,” Eve whispers. “Leave us alone.”

Detective Gordon doesn’t take any notice. He slides his hand past Eve’s face to place his fingers against Sorrel’s neck.