Chapter 4 - Karen’s panic
The fuller account of my mother’s confession came two days later.
My attorney, Rebecca Sloan, sat beside my hospital bed.
Daniel sat across the room because I had agreed to allow him.
Rebecca was forty-nine.
Family and civil litigator.
Hair cut short.
Voice designed to eliminate melodrama.
She read from the initial police summary.
After I fell, Karen leaned over the railing.
She screamed my name.
Then ran downstairs.
Olivia followed.
Several guests called 911.
A retired nurse stabilized my head and kept people away.
Police arrived before the ambulance left.
Karen was sobbing.
Repeating:
“I didn’t mean for her to go over.”
Then:
“I only wanted her to stop.”
Then one officer asked:
“Stop what?”
That was when Karen began unraveling.
“She ruins everything.”
Then:
“I already ruined her marriage.”
One sentence.
The officer asked:
“What do you mean?”
Karen said:
“I lied to Daniel.”
Then:
“The messages weren’t from that day.”
Then:
“Olivia knew.”
Then:
“She didn’t wait. Emily didn’t wait. I told him she did.”
Rebecca stopped reading.
I stared at her.
“That’s it?”
“There’s more.”
Karen reportedly said she had been:
“trying to keep the family together.”
That breaking my marriage had been:
“not supposed to go that far.”
That Daniel was:
“taking Emily away.”
And that after the miscarriage she believed:
“Emily needed her family, not Boston.”
Boston.
There.
The city we were supposed to move to.
Daniel had accepted a senior engineering role there.
I had accepted a remote arrangement with my employer.
We were leaving Cincinnati two months after the pregnancy was due.
Karen hated it.
She had called it:
“Daniel’s plan.”
It had been ours.
Rebecca said:
“Your mother’s statements are evidence. They are not automatically the whole truth.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“But the screenshots?”
“Daniel provided what he received.”
She looked toward him.
He nodded.
“They’re cropped.”
Rebecca continued:
“We should be able to compare them against your original messages if you still have the thread or cloud backup.”
I did.
Seven years of family texts.
May you like
The truth was going to have timestamps.
I had never been so angry at a clock.
