10:27 — gas station receipt, Emily’s belongings.
11:08 — incident report stamped.
11:54 — Daniel’s first call to me.
11:56 — Richard, call me when you get this. Emily isn’t home.
12:46 — Daniel’s second call. The door chime.

And in the middle of it, on a card I had written and rewritten four times because my handwriting kept going bad:

HE LIED TO YOU TOO.

I had read that sentence as a message to me. Every person who saw it read it that way. The deputy read it that way. I think even Alan did.

My daughter is lying face down in a trauma bay with five words on her back and her father is standing over her, and of course the father thinks the sentence is aimed at him.

It isn’t, though. Read it as words instead of as a wound. *He lied to you too.*