Chapter 3 - The Night Mark Was Supposed to Be Working
Mark had told me he worked late that Thursday.
The camera said otherwise.
The timestamp showed 11:48 p.m.
Diane sat beside Emma’s bed.
Then the bedroom door opened.
Mark walked inside.
My husband.
He looked toward the sleeping child.
Then toward his mother.
“You gave it to her?”
Diane nodded.
My body went cold.
Mark knew.
Not afterward.
During.
The social worker paused the recording.
“Rachel?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Do you want us to continue?”
“Yes.”
Mark’s recorded voice filled the room.
“How long until she’s asleep?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“And Rachel?”
“Still downstairs.”
Mark rubbed his face.
“You can’t keep increasing it.”
Increasing?
I grabbed the edge of the examination table.
Diane looked toward the officers.
“This is being misunderstood.”
The recording continued.
Diane lowered her voice.
“She’s still remembering things.”
Mark looked toward Emma.
“She’s four.”
“Exactly. Which means eventually she’ll stop.”
Remembering what?
Emma pressed against me.
I whispered:
“What were they talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
The video showed Mark walking toward the bookshelf.
For one terrifying second I thought he had noticed the camera.
Instead, he removed something from behind Emma’s stuffed animals.
A photograph.
He showed it to Diane.
Even through the grainy recording, I recognized the people.
Mark.
Diane.
And another woman.
The social worker enlarged the image.
The woman looked like me.
Not similar.
Almost identical.
Then Mark said:
“If Rachel ever finds this, everything falls apart.”
The room went silent.
Diane lunged for the tablet.
Security caught her.
“THAT IS PRIVATE!”
Emma screamed.
I pulled her against me.
The recording continued.
Diane looked directly toward my sleeping daughter.
“She shouldn’t have been brought into this family in the first place.”
My heart stopped.
Mark snapped:
“Don’t say that.”
“Why? Because she’s yours?”
He grabbed his mother’s arm.
“Because she’s Rachel’s daughter.”
Diane laughed.
“That depends on what you mean by Rachel.”
The recording ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then Dr. Stevens noticed something.
“There are twenty-three videos?”
“Yes.”
“But twenty-one nights of dosing.”
I looked at the list.
He was right.
Two recordings were from before Diane supposedly began giving Emma medication.
I opened the oldest.
The timestamp was nearly eight months earlier.
Diane had not been staying with us then.
Yet she was inside Emma’s bedroom.
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And she wasn’t alone.
The woman from the photograph was standing beside her.
