Booktree.ng_Forgotten-Witness

Emily looked at Reynolds as he hunkered down next to her
chair. She smiled at him and watched his lips as if that would
help her understand what he was saying. She wasn’t impatient
or confused, engaged or curious. Emily Bates was simply there
like the chair in a room or a window in a wall. She brought no
energy to it, nor did she take any away. The light had passed
from golden to pale as a peach as the sun went down. The
glass had been swept from the floor and the jagged pieces
removed from the broken frame. The lace panel had been
removed to be cleaned of Josie’s blood. The missing curtain
made the two rooms feel naked as if the resident had moved
on.
Josie had that same feeling of emptiness when she stood in
her father’s house after his death. It wasn’t a personal void,
just a physical one. Without her father, the house was nothing
more than walls, a patch of lawn, and a roof. Someone else
would eat in the kitchen, and someone else would sleep in the
bedroom and watch television in the living room. Someday
they would be gone too and the cycle would start again.
Reynolds patted Emily’s shoulder just before he stepped
aside giving Josie permission to approach. Josie cleared her
throat, fearful that her voice would catch on the first word she
uttered. Emily kept her eyes on Bernard Reynolds the way
Max might watch Josie, with utter trust that she was safe in his
presence.
Emily had nothing to fear. Josie wasn’t a lawyer, she wasn’t
a woman about to be married, and she wasn’t guardian to a girl
with too much courage for her own good. Josie Bates was
thirteen again, in awe of her beautiful mother, shy in her
presence. Emily was the woman Josie had wanted to be. She
prayed her mother wouldn’t find her lacking. She refused to
believe that Emily would not recognize her at all.
Josie went around the chair and stood in front of Emily.
Their first encounter had been so swift, so staggeringly brutal,
that Josie had only registered an impression of the woman.
Now she saw her as she was: aged but still beautiful, regal,
and elegant. How Josie had always wished the sum of her