I held it up. “Ellie. This is the last one with people in it.”

She took it from me. Looked at it for a long time. Her face did this thing I can’t really describe. Not sad exactly. More like she was deciding something.

“Do you want to know why I stopped?”

My stomach did a slow roll. Because suddenly the hallway felt too quiet and I realized I’d been carrying this question for sixteen years without knowing it was heavy. “Yeah,” I said. “Tell me.”

She set the drawing on her knee. “Mrs. Patterson,” she said. “The babysitter.”

I remembered Linda Patterson. Older woman, lived two streets over. Watched Ellie after school for maybe a year when Ellie was in kindergarten and first grade. Seemed fine. Ellie never complained. We stopped using her because Craig’s mom moved closer and took over pickup duty.

“I drew her a picture,” Ellie said. “At her house one afternoon. A family picture, like this one. I was so proud of it. I brought it over to show her and she looked at it and she said, ‘That’s ugly. Just like you.'”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“I was six, Mom. I didn’t know what to do with that. I just stood there. And then I did the thing that made sense to me. I ran home. I found you. I brought you the same drawing. The exact same one. And I said, ‘Is this ugly?'”

I was already shaking my head. “I don’t remember this.”

“I know,” she said. And her voice was steady but something underneath it wasn’t. “You were on the phone. In the kitchen. You had it between your shoulder and your ear and you were stirring something on the stove.

I was pulling on your shirt. You looked at it for maybe one second.”

“What did I say?”

She picked the drawing up off her knee and put it back in the shoebox. Carefully. Like it was evidence.

“You said, ‘Honey, not right now. That’s nice but it’s not really…'” She trailed off. “You didn’t finish the sentence. You went back to your phone call. I don’t even think you knew you said it.”