Chapter 8 - Three in the Morning
The recovered clip had no audio.
That made it worse.
At 3:04 a.m., Emma was asleep.
At 3:05, her bedroom door opened.
Vanessa entered carrying a small bottle.
She stood beside Emma’s bed for nearly a minute.
Then she opened Emma’s water cup.
Poured something inside.
Stirred it.
Left.
I couldn’t breathe.
“What is that?” I asked.
“No idea,” Marcus said.
The police officer immediately called a supervisor.
Emma’s pediatrician ordered bloodwork, but six days had passed. Whatever had been in the cup might no longer be detectable.
When I confronted Vanessa through the doorway, she didn’t deny entering the room.
“It was melatonin,” she said.
“Why?”
“She wasn’t sleeping.”
“You drugged my daughter without telling me?”
“It’s over-the-counter.”
“How much?”
“Daniel, stop using that word.”
“What word?”
“Drugged.”
“You put something in her drink at three in the morning.”
She laughed bitterly. “Because I was the one actually parenting while you were working.”
Emma appeared behind me.
Vanessa saw her and smiled sadly.
“Tell your dad, sweetheart. You were having nightmares.”
Emma whispered, “You said it was medicine so I’d forget.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared.
I turned to Emma. “Forget what?”
She squeezed her fox.
“The yelling in the garage.”
I crouched. “What yelling?”
“You and Mommy.”
My whole body went cold.
“My mommy before she died.”
Vanessa said, “She’s confused.”
Emma shook her head violently. “No! I heard her voice.”
I took Emma upstairs to calm her down, but her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took out an old tablet I thought had broken years ago.
“It turns on if you hold the charger funny,” she said.
The home screen loaded.
One audio file sat in the recordings folder.
Emma had named it MOMMY GARAGE.
The date was from two weeks earlier.
I pressed play.
Static filled the room.
May you like
Then Laura’s voice—my dead wife’s voice—came through the speaker.
“Daniel, if you ever hear this, don’t trust Vanessa.”
