Chapter 8 - The Broken Moon
My childhood home had been sold twenty-four years earlier.
Detective Coleman located the current owners.
Renovations had changed almost everything.
Except the attic.
Boxes from previous owners remained behind a sealed storage wall.
Police obtained permission to search.
I went with them.
The red room was now painted blue.
No rocking horse.
No childhood furniture.
But when I entered, my body reacted before my mind did.
My hands began shaking.
A corner near the window.
That was where the bed had been.
The lamp had stood beside it.
Detective Coleman asked if I needed to leave.
“No.”
I touched the wall.
A memory flashed.
Smoke.
Coughing.
Hannah crying.
Someone shouting downstairs.
Then nothing.
We searched the attic.
Behind old insulation, an officer found a cardboard box labeled BENNETT.
Inside were childhood books, photographs and one broken ceramic lamp shaped like a crescent moon.
My breath stopped.
The base rattled.
Coleman opened it.
Inside was a tiny brass key.
Not Laura’s modern recording.
Something older.
We searched the remaining boxes.
The key opened a small metal cashbox.
Inside were mini cassette tapes.
One labeled:
October 17.
The night of the fire.
There was also a note.
Not Laura’s handwriting.
My mother’s.
If Rebecca remembers, do not tell her until Diane is gone.
Diane.
My mother had named her.
Detective Coleman immediately bagged everything.
Then I noticed another envelope.
It contained photographs taken after the fire.
One showed the red room.
Another showed the hallway.
A third showed something investigators apparently missed.
A prescription bottle beneath the bed.
Diane Collins.
I stared at it.
The past and present suddenly mirrored each other.
Orange bottle.
Child.
Secret medication.
“Detective…”
Coleman saw it too.
Diane had possessed psychiatric medication even then.
But that still did not prove she gave anything to us.
Then forensic technicians digitized the cassette.
The audio was damaged.
Children’s voices.
My mother.
A man.
Then Diane.
My younger voice cried:
“I don’t want the sleepy medicine.”
Everyone in the room stopped.
Diane answered:
“It’s just a vitamin.”
Twenty-four years earlier.
Same words.
Same method.
Then Hannah screamed.
The recording distorted.
A crash.
My mother shouted Diane’s name.
And just before the tape ended, a male voice said something none of us expected:
“Get the girls out. I’ll handle Rebecca.”
Detective Coleman replayed it.
I knew that voice.
Not Mark.
Someone older.
Someone I had heard hundreds of times during my marriage.
May you like
Mark’s late father.
Thomas Patterson.
