Chapter 3 - Nora's Copy
The third time, the line connected.
"What?"
"I was wrong."
"I'm sorry."
"That's not enough."
"I know."
"You looked at me like I was hurting her."
"I saw what someone wanted me to see."
"Now you understand."
"Where are you?"
"Not at the house."
"I need the originals."
"You don't have originals anymore."
His hand tightened around the phone.
"What does that mean?"
"The household system overwrites nursery instructions every midnight. I started taking screenshots after it happened twice."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried."
Caleb remembered three conversations he had cut short.
A feeding chart that "didn't make sense."
A medication reminder Nora said she had never entered.
A locked cabinet that appeared open.
Every time, he had told the house manager to handle it.
"Who did you tell?"
"Helen Crowe."
Caleb had hired Helen on Malcolm's recommendation.
"What did she say?"
"That I was tired."
"Anyone else?"
"Your father."
"You talked to Malcolm?"
"He came to the nursery last week. I told him the schedules were changing."
"What did he say?"
"He smiled and said I should be careful accusing expensive systems of making human mistakes."
"Where are you?"
"A motel."
"I'm sending security."
"No."
"Nora--"
"I don't know which security people are yours and which are his."
The Whitcomb estate used a company Malcolm had founded twenty years earlier.
Most guards had known Malcolm longer than Caleb.
"Then tell me what you need."
"Take Sophie somewhere without household staff."
"Why?"
"Because the lavender onesie wasn't the first change."
"What else changed?"
"Food. Sleep. Medicine times. Not dangerous enough to look obvious. Just enough to make her tired, irritable, hard to settle."
"For what?"
"To make me look incompetent?"
"At first I thought so."
"At first?"
"Then I found the custody notes."
"What custody notes?"
"Your father's attorney requested a draft emergency guardianship petition."
"Against who?"
"You."
"It says you are grieving, unstable, absent, and dependent on unqualified staff."
Caleb's voice came out flat.
"My wife died eighteen months ago."
"I know."
"You think my father is trying to take Sophie?"
"I think he wants control of something that requires controlling Sophie."
His daughter had inherited twenty-two percent of Whitcomb Medical from her mother.
Shares Malcolm could not vote.
May you like
Unless a court gave him guardianship.
"Caleb, the petition was drafted before I was hired."
