The Quiet Room
The Sound of the Buckle

9. What Remains Unknown

August 25, 2026 · Part 9 of 10 · 2 min

Dr. Lenora Fitch's office had a rug shaped like a garden and a shelf of dolls with no faces drawn on, deliberately, so a child could put whatever face she needed on them that day. Junie had been coming twice a week for a month.

"She let me braid her hair this morning," Rosalind told the therapist, and heard her own voice catch on it, absurdly grateful for something so small. "She hasn't let anyone touch her hair since we brought her home."

"That's not small," Dr. Fitch said. "That's trust, rebuilding one strand at a time. Don't let anyone tell you that's ordinary."

Junie had slept through one full night without waking, too — no shadow at the door, no whispered is Uncle Em here. Small mercies, stacking up like coins.

Meanwhile the case moved the way cases move: slowly, in paperwork, in headlines Rosalind made herself stop reading. Emmett Corliss was formally indicted on eleven counts. The prosecutor's office called it one of the worst foster-fraud cases the county had seen in a decade.

Gareth's case was different. Quieter. Unresolved.

"His attorney is arguing the phone data shows presence, not participation," the prosecutor told Rosalind on a call that lasted four careful minutes. "We have him there. We don't yet have him doing anything once he was there. It's not enough to charge — not yet. The investigation into him specifically is still open."

Still open. Not yet. Rosalind turned the words over long after she'd hung up, understanding, with a kind of grief she hadn't expected, that she might never get a clean answer about the man she'd married — that some truths simply stayed unfinished, no matter how badly you needed them closed.

It didn't change what she'd already decided. She'd chosen Junie the moment the belt buckle clinked in that hallway, and she'd choose her again every day after, verdict or no verdict.

Then the letter came from Gareth's attorney — a request for a supervised visitation hearing, a date circled in red on the enclosed form, eleven days out.

She would have to sit in a room with him again. Soon.

Continue the story Part 10: 10. The Quiet Room →

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