The female officer did not look away from David.
“Sir, hold out your right hand.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Lily whimpered against my chest.
The sound was small, but in the silence of the living room it seemed louder than the police radio at the officer’s shoulder.
David gave a thin smile.
“Why?”
The officer turned my phone so he could see the photograph.
Four narrow bruises marked the outside of Lily’s thigh.
A broader mark curved along the inside.
“I am asking you to show me your hand.”
“That picture proves nothing.”
“No one said it did.”
His smile disappeared.
Jennifer stepped closer to him, but he did not look at her.
He kept his eyes on the officer as he slowly raised his right hand.
His fingers were broad.
His thumb angled outward.
When the officer held the phone beside it without letting him touch the device, the span appeared disturbingly close to the pattern in the photograph.
It was not proof by itself.
The officer said that immediately.
But David reacted as though she had accused him outright.
“This is insane,” he snapped.
“We leave our daughter here for a few hours, and suddenly the police are comparing my hands to bruises?”
Jennifer seized on his words.
“Exactly.
Lily was fine when I dropped her off.”
The officer looked at her.
“You changed the baby before bringing her here?”
Jennifer hesitated.
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Around ten.”
“And there were no marks?”
“None.”
The officer wrote that down.
I watched Jennifer’s face as she answered.
Her voice was quick and certain, but she would not look at Lily.
The male officer pointed toward David’s wrist.
“You were hospitalized today?”
David lowered his hand and tugged his hoodie sleeve over the bracelet.
“I just got out.”
“What time were you discharged?”
“I don’t know.
A little while ago.”
Jennifer turned toward him too quickly.
That was the first crack.
She had told me that morning that David was in the hospital and that she needed a break.
Now David claimed he had only just been released, yet neither of them could explain where he had been between his discharge and his arrival at my house.
The officers separated them before asking anything else.
The male officer took David onto the front porch.
The female officer led Jennifer into the kitchen.
Their body cameras continued recording.
Tom stayed near the hallway so Sophia could not see the changing mat.
She had gone quiet in the living room, the television playing to an audience of one frightened child who was not watching it.
The female officer returned to me and lowered her voice.
