Part One: Six Ten

I got home at ten past six in the evening on Thursday the twelfth of September and I had my suitcase in my right hand when I opened the front door.

Our entry hall in Phoenix is tiled.

There is a console table against the left-hand wall, oak, with a bowl on it for keys, and my daughter was on the floor between that table and the door with her backpack still on one shoulder.

For about a second I thought she was asleep.

I have been asked about that second by five different people including a detective and I have stopped being embarrassed about it.

You see a shape on a floor in your own house at the end of a flight and your brain hands you the cheapest explanation available.

Then I saw her face.

She was grey.

There was a split about an inch long above her right eyebrow and a smear of blood on the tile that had already gone tacky at the edges, which is a thing I noticed at the time and did not understand the significance of for three weeks.

I went down on my knees and got my hands under her head and said her name.

Nothing.

Then her eyelids moved and she made a sound and her right hand came up about four inches and went down again.

And my wife said, from about eight feet away, with her arms folded:

“Don’t look at me like that.”

I said, “What happened?”

“She got dizzy and fell.”

“How long has she been here?”