The kitchen clock showed exactly 2:27 AM when the landline rang, its high-pitched bell cutting through the quiet house.
I sat at the wooden table with a cup of cold chamomile tea, staring at the empty brass hook by the pantry where the spare key to my father’s filing cabinet always hung. It had been missing since my visit three days ago.
I picked up the receiver on the third ring.
“Clara, they have me in the lobby,” my father said, his voice paper-thin and trembling. “They won’t let me go home to Elm Lane.”
“Who has you, Dad?” I asked, my fingers automatically tightening around my leather watch strap, adjusting the band by one notch. “Are you hurt?”
“The police,” he whispered, followed by a soft, ragged intake of breath that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete. “Vanessa said I was dangerous, Clara. She told them I lost my mind.”
The line went dead before I could ask him about his medication.
I reached the Marion County Sheriff’s Department east station twenty-three minutes later, the tires of my Buick LeSabre squeaking as I pulled into the gravel lot.
Inside, the lobby smelled of floor wax and stale cigarette smoke from the decades before they banned it.
My father, Arthur, sat on a green plastic chair in the corner under the harsh glare of fluorescent tubes, wrapped in a thin, damp wool blanket that looked like it belonged in a squad car trunk. His left hand repeatedly rubbed his right wrist, a nervous habit from his thirty years as a high school principal.
A young officer with his sleeves rolled up sat behind the safety glass counter, his hands laced behind his head as he leaned back in a squeaking swivel chair. His nameplate read Davis.
“I am Clara Vance,” I said, stepping up to the black speaking grate. “That is my father, Arthur Vance. Why is he being held here?”
Davis did not lower his arms. He glanced up at the ceiling, then back at his computer screen, clicking a mouse twice without looking at me.
“Officer,” I said, keeping my voice level and flat. “I asked you a direct question.”
