Chapter 4 — Chloe describes her afternoon spent drawing in the living room — Then a fresh clump of dirt drops from above
Chloe took a deep breath, her fingers clutching the fabric of her cat-print shirt.
She stepped away from the sofa and pointed toward the low wooden table pushed against the far wall.
“I was sitting right there all afternoon,” Chloe said earnestly.
“I had my yellow sketchbook open and my box of colored pencils spread out on the rug.”
She walked over to the table and picked up a handful of scattered drawing pencils to prove her point.
“I didn’t even get up to go to the kitchen once until Grandma started shouting.”
Brenda let out a sharp, skeptical breath.
“Anybody can pick up pencils after they make a mess,” Brenda retorted.
“Where are the drawings you were supposedly working on all this time?”
Chloe turned around quickly and pointed down at the open sketchbook resting flat on the floorboards.
Several pages were filled with bright crayon drawings of houses, trees, and smiling family members.
None of the pages had a single speck of dirt or mud on them.
Elena walked over to the low table and looked down at the clean paper.
She gently touched the corner of the topmost page.
The paper was crisp, dry, and completely unstained.
“Her papers are entirely dry, Mom,” Elena said, looking back at Brenda.
“If she had been running around outside in the wet grass and tracking mud through the hallway, her hands and sleeves would show some sign of soil.”
Elena reached out and turned over Chloe’s open palms.
The skin was clean, save for a faint smudge of yellow pencil wax on her right thumb.
Brenda narrowed her eyes, still unwilling to admit defeat.
“She could have washed her hands before you came into the room,” Brenda argued.
“Kids are fast when they want to cover their tracks.”
Before Elena could respond, a dry, crumbling sound drifted down from the ceiling directly above them.
A fresh clump of dried mud detached itself from the overhead molding and landed with a soft slap against the edge of the hallway rug.
Elena and Brenda both froze, their eyes darting upward to the plastered ceiling overhead.
A rhythmic, heavy thumping sound started up immediately against the baseboard near the dark hallway corner.