been turned back toward the hallway.
‘Milo, did you have a nightmare?’
He stared at the rug. ‘I dreamed about the blue room.’
It was the first time he had named it.
I sat several feet away so he would not feel crowded. ‘What is the blue room?’
His fingers dug into the rabbit’s ear.
‘I can’t say.’
‘Because your mom told you not to?’
He began rocking, barely, heel to toe.
‘If I say, she’ll make everyone think I’m broken.’
The words were too adult. Too exact.
‘You are not broken,’ I said.
His eyes filled. ‘That’s what Dad said.’
I felt the room shift.
Lena had told me Milo’s father had abandoned them. She said he sent a birthday card once, then vanished. She said talking about him upset Milo, so I had never pushed.
‘Your dad said that to you?’
Milo nodded.
‘When did you last see him?’
His mouth opened, then closed.
The hallway speaker crackled.
Both of us froze.
A faint hum came from the camera outside the door as it adjusted its angle.
No voice came through.
But Milo folded into himself as if he had been struck.
The next morning, I made pancakes. I burned the first two. Milo watched me scrape them into the trash and looked horrified.
‘It’s fine,’ I said.
‘You’re not mad?’
‘At pancakes? No.’
He almost smiled.
Then his backpack tipped off the chair. A white envelope slid halfway out, decorated with dinosaur stickers. Milo lunged so fast the stool scraped the floor.
‘Milo.’
He clutched the envelope to his chest.
I held up both hands. ‘You don’t have to show me.’
His eyes darted to the pantry camera. I had unplugged the router before breakfast, telling Milo the internet was being weird. It was not a perfect solution; some cameras could record locally. But the red light above the pantry was dark.
He noticed too.
Something changed in his face.
He climbed off the stool, dragged a kitchen chair to the door, and wedged it beneath the knob. Then he came back to me with the envelope shaking between both hands.
‘Daddy Nathan,’ he whispered, and the name hit me so hard I almost lost my breath. ‘I hid this from Mom.’
I took the envelope carefully, as if sudden movement might make him regret trusting me.
Inside was a photograph.
Milo stood in a bare room painted a dull blue. His pajama sleeve was torn. His face was swollen from crying, though there were no visible injuries I could identify from the picture alone. He held a sheet of paper with a date written on it in marker. The words were blurred by the angle, but the numbers were clear enough.
Three months before Lena and I met.
Behind him sat a plastic storage bin. The lid was open. A latch had been installed on the outside.
Beneath the photograph lay a folded note written in crooked pencil.
If I disappear, ask Mrs. Bell about the blue room.
I knew Mrs. Bell only as the elderly neighbor across the street who watered her roses in rain boots and waved at Milo through the window. Lena had once called her nosy. Milo had once watched her from the upstairs landing with such longing that I thought he
