The Quiet Room
The Sound of the Buckle

4. The Calls

August 25, 2026 · Part 4 of 10 · 2 min

She printed all forty-one pages before the sun was even up.

"Explain this," she said, setting the stack in front of Gareth's coffee like a verdict.

He scanned the first page, and she watched the careful patience from the night before crack at the edges. "I told you. He was struggling."

"For eleven weeks? Every night? At three in the morning?"

"He couldn't sleep. People call people when they can't sleep, Rosalind, I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to tell me the truth. A couple times isn't forty-one calls and however many visits nobody logged. Our daughter was in that house being — " Her voice broke on the word she wasn't ready to say. "And you were calling him every single night."

"Don't." His voice came out sharper than she'd ever heard it, chair scraping back, a flash of something in his eyes that made her step back without deciding to. "Don't you dare stand in our kitchen and imply — I am her father. I would never."

"Then why do you sound like a man who's rehearsed this?"

He didn't answer that. He just stood there, breathing hard, the printed pages fanned across the counter between them like evidence in a trial neither of them had agreed to hold.

Rosalind took Junie upstairs early that night, sat with her until she slept, and didn't return to her own bed. She lay instead on the floor of Junie's room, the moon nightlight throwing soft shapes on the ceiling, and did not sleep either.

The doorbell rang at 8 a.m.

Through the window she saw a woman in a blazer, a badge already out and open in her hand, a car in the driveway with government plates.

"Mrs. Hart?" the woman said when Rosalind opened the door. "Detective Priya Okonkwo. I need to speak with you about Emmett Corliss." A pause, her eyes moving past Rosalind into the house. "Is your husband home?"

Continue the story Part 5: 5. The Detective →

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