PART 6
“Ryan?”
Her voice sounded small.
Not like my sister.
Not like the woman who had rolled her eyes in the waiting room.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She began crying.
“I didn’t know it would get that bad.”
I closed my eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“I thought Mom was just trying to prove a point.”
“A point?”
“That Emily needed help. That she wasn’t perfect. That you always act like Emily knows everything and we’re just in the way.”
I gripped the phone.
“Noah is a newborn baby, Megan.”
“I know.”
“Emily had just given birth.”
“I know.”
“Then explain to me how any of this made sense to you.”
She sobbed once.
“It didn’t. Not after the first day. But Mom kept saying she had it handled. She said Emily was manipulating everyone. She said if we didn’t intervene now, you’d disappear from the family forever.”
I looked across the courtyard. A tree moved gently in the wind. Beyond it, people walked in and out of the hospital doors carrying flowers, coffee, balloons, ordinary offerings of hope.
“What did Mom give Emily?”
Silence.
“Megan.”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she give her?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she whispered. “Something to help her rest.”
The world narrowed.
“Did Emily ask for it?”
“No.”
My breath came slowly through my nose.
“How many times?”
“I only saw once.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Megan cried harder.
“I don’t know. Mom said it was harmless. She said Emily was hysterical and needed sleep.”
Officer Ruiz was watching my face closely now.
I forced my voice to stay steady.
“Why did you change the baby monitor account?”
“Mom told me you wanted privacy. She said Emily was obsessing over it.”
“You believed that?”
“I wanted to.”
That was the first honest thing she had said.
“Where is Mom now?” I asked.
“At home.”
“Her home?”
“Yes. She keeps saying she needs to talk to you before you make a terrible mistake.”
I almost laughed again.
A terrible mistake.
Like protecting my wife.
Like believing my own eyes.
“Megan, listen carefully. Do not warn her. Do not delete anything. Do not touch any phones, computers, messages, receipts, anything. If you want to start telling the truth, tell it to the police.”
“I’m scared.”
“So was Emily.”
She went quiet.
I ended the call.
Officer Ruiz stepped closer.
“Was that recorded?”
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded.
“Good.”
By evening, the hospital room had become strangely peaceful. Emily slept with Noah tucked safely nearby. Karen knitted in the corner, though I don’t think she completed a single row. David read the same page of his book for an hour.
I sat beside Emily and watched my son breathe.
My phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
At first, I thought it was spam.
Then I opened it.
The message contained only a photograph.
It was a screenshot of a document.
A legal form.
Petition for Emergency Guardianship of Minor Child.
My eyes moved down the page.
Noah Mitchell.
Applicant: Linda Mitchell.
My stomach turned to ice.
Another message arrived.
This one had four words.
Ask Emily about Daniel.
I stared at the screen.
Daniel?
I looked at Emily sleeping in the bed, her face turned toward our son.
For the first time since the nightmare began, the mystery shifted.
Not away from my mother.
But wider.
May you like
Because beneath the fear, beneath the anger, beneath everything I thought I understood, a new question had opened like a door in a dark room.
Who was Daniel—and why had someone waited until now to bring him into our lives?
