Her shoulders folded inward.
“I saw them,” she said.
David’s head turned.
The officer leaned closer.
“When?”
Jennifer stared at the floor.
“This morning.”
My stomach dropped.
I had known the possibility was there.
Hearing my sister say it was different.
She had seen the bruises before she put Lily in my arms.
The officer asked, “Before you brought her to your sister’s house?”
Jennifer nodded.
David stood.
The male officer immediately told him to sit back down.
“This is insane,” David said.
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Jennifer flinched at his voice.
Then she looked at Lily.
For the first time since she had walked into my house, she looked at her daughter for more than a second.
“I knew,” she whispered.
I felt something inside me break cleanly in two.
“You knew?”
Jennifer turned toward me.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You knew she was bruised.”
“I was scared.”
“You gave her to me without saying anything.”
Her face twisted.
“I thought—”
She stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“What did you think?”
“That they would fade.”
The words were so soft I almost wished I had misheard them.
David swore under his breath.
Jennifer looked at him, then back at the officer.
She began talking quickly now, like once the first piece of truth escaped she could no longer keep the rest sealed inside.
Lily had been crying before dawn.
David had been frustrated.
Jennifer said he picked Lily up and held her too hard while telling her to stop crying.
She told him to give the baby back.
He did.
Later, while changing Lily, Jennifer saw marks forming on her thighs where his fingers had been.
She confronted him.
David told her she was imagining things.
When the bruises darkened, he changed his explanation.
Babies bruised easily, he said.
Maybe Jennifer had done it during a diaper change.
Maybe she had held Lily wrong.
Then came the warning that had apparently been living in my sister’s head all day.
If she told anyone, he said, nobody would believe a mother who admitted she had watched it happen.
They might take Lily from both of them.
Jennifer believed enough of that threat to become dangerous in a different way.
She stayed quiet.
When David went to the hospital later that morning, she brought Lily to me and said she needed a break.
