Chapter 4 - The Missing Thirty-Seven Minutes

I left the phone where it was. I took a photo of the screen and showed it to Officer Patel. He told me not to search the device, then documented where we'd found it. Mom looked at us from across the room and went completely still.

"Whose phone is that?" he asked her.

"Mine. I use it for the baby monitor."

"May we look at it?"

"No. It's private."

Patel nodded. "That's your choice." He took down the details, and the officers told her to arrange somewhere else to stay that night. They didn't promise an arrest on my timeline. Mara and I were told to call immediately if Mom returned or made threats.

When the door closed behind her, the house sounded wrong. Elsie made a small noise in Mara's arms. For the first time, no one called her lazy.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

Mara stared at the floor. "I tried."

She was right. Two weeks earlier she'd said she didn't want Mom staying in the house. I'd told her we couldn't afford full-time help. She'd said Mom made her nervous. I'd told her sleep deprivation made everything feel bigger.

My apology lodged in my throat.

"I thought you wouldn't believe me," Mara added. "Because you never did."

We went to urgent care after a nurse on the phone recommended documentation of Mara's scalp injuries. A pediatric triage nurse advised us about warning signs to watch for in Elsie and helped arrange a same-day infant check. The baby had no visible injuries, and her breathing and feeding were normal. Mara, however, had a tender patch near her crown and bruising along one forearm.

In the waiting room she took a small notebook from her diaper bag. Every page contained a date, a feeding time, and a short sentence written in hurried pencil. Some said: Helen took her again. Others said: Helen says I'm making this up.

On the last page was a time: 7:14 p.m., yesterday.

"The monitor lost its connection then," Mara said. "She told me it was a bad battery."

I opened the nursery camera app. It showed an offline gap, starting at 7:14 and ending at 7:51. Thirty-seven minutes missing. Before and after the gap, the camera faced the crib.

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Mara covered the notebook with her hand.

"The worst thing happened during those thirty-seven minutes," she said.