Chapter 2 - The Missing Four Minutes
Richard did not ask them to destroy the recording.
He asked them to play it.
That surprised Ethan.
The footage showed Richard and Eleanor outside Lily’s bedroom at 7:41 p.m.
No audio.
Richard spoke.
Pointed toward Lily’s room.
Eleanor folded her arms.
Richard appeared to become angry.
Then he walked away.
At 7:43 Eleanor entered Lily’s room.
At 7:47 she emerged holding Lily by the wrist.
At 7:48 the camera feed stopped.
At 7:52 it returned.
By then the corridor was empty.
Four minutes were missing.
The staircase incident occurred at 7:54.
Ethan looked at his father.
“What did you tell her?”
Richard answered:
“To get Lily out of that room.”
Ethan stared.
“Why?”
Richard looked toward Lily.
The child was now curled beneath a blanket in the sitting room with one of the household nurses checking her.
“Because I believed someone had entered it.”
That changed the question.
Richard explained that one of the guards had noticed Lily’s bedroom window open despite freezing weather.
Mud marked the exterior balcony.
Richard ordered Eleanor to move Lily downstairs while security searched the room.
“And ‘do it tonight’?”
“Something else.”
“What?”
Richard hesitated.
Ethan’s anger returned.
“No more half-answers.”
Richard finally said:
“I told your mother to leave me.”
Silence.
Eleanor looked away.
Ethan blinked.
“What?”
Their marriage had been cold for years, but Richard claimed that afternoon he had discovered Eleanor had been secretly moving large amounts of family money.
He confronted her.
He told her their marriage was finished.
“Do it tonight,” Richard had said.
Pack your belongings.
Leave the house.
That could explain Eleanor telling Lily Richard would “finally love her again.”
But only if Eleanor had somehow connected Lily to the collapse of her marriage.
Why?
Eleanor refused to answer.
Ethan turned to the guards.
“Call the police.”
Richard did not object.
Eleanor did.
“You can't.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Watch me.”
“If police come into this house tonight, you will destroy something you don't understand.”
“You threw a seven-year-old down a staircase.”
“I know what I did.”
The calmness of that sentence chilled him.
“Then explain it.”
Eleanor stared at Lily.
Her eyes glistened.
“I can't.”
Richard looked almost disgusted.
“You nearly killed your granddaughter and you're protecting a secret?”
Eleanor suddenly laughed.
A strange, brittle sound.
“You're still pretending she's your granddaughter?”
The foyer went silent.
Ethan's stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?”
Eleanor realized she had said too much.
Richard crossed the marble floor.
“Eleanor.”
She backed away.
“Don't.”
“Explain what you meant.”
“No.”
Ethan grabbed her arm.
“Is Lily my daughter?”
Eleanor looked at him with contempt.
“Of course she is.”
“Then what did you mean?”
She refused.
The police arrived.
Eleanor was taken away for questioning.
Before leaving, she turned to Richard.
“You should have burned it when I told you.”
Richard went pale.
Ethan heard.
“Burned what?”
Richard did not answer.
Later, after Lily finally fell asleep against Ethan’s chest, security technicians recovered part of the missing corridor footage.
Only seventeen seconds.
Enough.
At 7:49 p.m., Eleanor was walking Lily toward the staircase.
Then Eleanor suddenly stopped.
She looked toward someone outside the camera frame.
Her face changed.
She released Lily’s wrist.
And for several seconds, Eleanor appeared to argue desperately with whoever was standing there.
Ethan leaned toward the monitor.
“Can you recover the audio?”
“Maybe.”
An hour later, technicians extracted three broken fragments.
Eleanor’s voice:
“…not the child…”
Static.
Then:
“…you promised Richard would never know…”
And finally, another voice.
A man.
Only four words survived.
“Then make her disappear.”
May you like
Ethan looked at Richard.
It was not his father’s voice.
