In 2001 I finally called the number on it, and the woman who answered said she had been expecting my call for years. I didn’t know what she meant until she asked me for my name and then went quiet. Finally, she said, “Your father gave us a different story that night.” I sat on the floor with the old card in my hand and asked what story he had told them.
She told me the report had never been closed the way I thought it had. The officer had written down everything I said, including the part about what happened before she arrived. She had also made a note that my mother appeared frightened to speak while my father was in the room. Then the woman said there was one more thing — something she had never been allowed to tell me while I was a child.
She had kept a copy of the report in a separate file because she believed I might need it someday. I asked why, and she said, “Because your father came back to the station the next morning and asked whether you had told us about the basement.” I hadn’t mentioned any basement to the officers. I hadn’t even known why that word suddenly made my mother start crying.
