Chapter 8 - The Recording
No one spoke while Miriam connected the tablet to the house speakers.
The recording began with footsteps.
My footsteps.
Then Vanessa’s voice.
“You don’t need to keep trying, Claire. Adrian already decided.”
My own voice answered, distant and confused. “Decided what?”
“You’ll hear soon enough.”
A door opened.
Then there was a sharp scrape.
The audio cut off.
I gripped the chair.
“I remember that day.”
Adrian looked at me. “What happened?”
“I fell on the stairs.”
His face changed.
Three months earlier, I had slipped near the top landing and bruised my hip badly enough to need an X-ray. Vanessa had been staying with us because of a “burst pipe” in her apartment.
She told everyone she found me after the fall.
The recording suggested she had been there before it.
Miriam played the next file.
Vanessa’s voice again.
“Don’t touch her. If she wakes, we have a problem.”
A man answered.
Not Adrian.
A stranger.
Then: “Move the bottle closer.”
I stared at Dad.
“What bottle?”
The analyst came back on speaker. “We’re still cataloging files. There are photos too.”
Images appeared on the tablet.
One showed a prescription bottle beside my bed.
Another showed a hand wearing a black glove opening my bathroom cabinet.
I remembered the week.
I had been dizzy every morning and slept twelve hours a day. My doctor blamed stress. The symptoms stopped after I threw away a refill because the pills smelled strange.
Adrian whispered, “Jesus.”
I turned on him. “Did you know?”
“No.”
“Did you ever wonder why I was sick?”
“I thought you were depressed.”
“Because Vanessa told you I was.”
He closed his eyes.
That was answer enough.
Dad stepped closer. “We call police now.”
Miriam nodded. “And preserve everything.”
Adrian grabbed the back of a chair. “Why would Vanessa drug Claire?”
I looked at the divorce folder.
Then at the private investigator’s report.
Then at the payments.
“She needed me to look unstable.”
Miriam’s phone buzzed.
She read the message twice.
“What?” Dad asked.
“The flash drive contains a draft petition for emergency guardianship.”
“Guardianship of who?”
Miriam looked at me.
“Claire.”
Adrian swore under his breath.
The petition claimed I was mentally ill, financially reckless, and incapable of making decisions.
At the bottom was a proposed guardian.
Adrian Vale.
May you like
And attached to the draft was a physician’s letter.
Signed by my family doctor.
