Chapter 3 - The Bad-Day File
Daniel recognized the man before June told him his name.
Grant Vale. Vanessa's older brother. The same developer who had spent the previous six months trying to buy the meadow behind Daniel's house.
In the recording, Grant leaned against the shed while Vanessa flipped through a stack of papers.
"He'll never agree to sell it," she said.
"He will if the girl needs expensive treatment," Grant answered. "Make the situation look urgent."
Daniel stopped the video.
"Why were you filming them?"
June folded her hands. "I heard Lily crying in the shed last Tuesday. Then those two started talking. I recorded because I thought I'd need proof."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried." June looked ashamed. "Vanessa told me you wanted privacy and that I'd lose my job if I bothered you. I should have come anyway."
Daniel couldn't argue. He remembered ignoring three calls from June during a work trip. Vanessa had told him they were about fertilizer.
He sent both recordings to his attorney, Mara Ellis, and told June to save the originals. Then he made Lily hot chocolate.
"What's a bad-day file?" he asked gently.
Lily's spoon stopped moving.
"Who told you about that?"
"No one's angry. I just want to understand."
"Vanessa has a blue notebook. Every time I cry, she writes a number. When I don't eat dinner, she writes two. She says doctors need to count all my bad days."
"And why would they need that?"
Lily slid off the stool. She went to the pantry, moved a cereal box, and brought back a crumpled sheet of paper.
A checklist had been written in an adult's neat handwriting: refusing food, emotional outbursts, aggression, separation difficulty.
At the bottom was a space for a parent's signature.
Lily pointed to one line.
"She made me practice saying this."
Daniel read it aloud: "I feel unsafe at home."
His daughter shook her head violently.
"But I only feel unsafe when she's here."
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Then Lily whispered the sentence Vanessa had told her never to repeat.
"If you tell Daddy, the people from Brookside will take you away."
